The Porcelain Orchid
by Slinkymilinky
Summary: There is a new threat to Konoha, one that will challenge the ideals of even the most hardened shinobi and its up to Team Kakashi to stop it. A fragile looking flower often has the strongest roots…if you look underneath the underneath. Eventual KakaSaku.
1. Prologue: Innocence

_Welcome to my first multi-chap fanfic! I hope you will read, enjoy and maybe drop me the odd review to let me know how I am doing._

_Warnings: I'll get this out the way: This fic is rated M. It is rated M for a reason. Also, don't expect random PWP...I am writing this because I want to tell a story, preferably one that fits into canon like a half-decent filler arc, so while KakaSaku is the pairing and trust me, they **will** do naugthy things with each other eventually, it is also only part of the reason I am writing this. I hope you'll all like it.  
_

_Obviously I do not own Naruto...that's why it's called a FAN-fic.  
_

_Beta-ed by the fantastic **ShipperTrish**  
_

* * *

**Prologue:**_**Innocence.**_

The corridors were dark and claustrophobic. Water dripped absently from old rusted pipes in the ceiling, landing with audible plops in small stagnant puddles that smelled musky and earthy like wet pottery. Tsunade pulled her coat around her arms, shivering involuntarily as she walked towards the furthest room, its door illuminated by an overhead strip light, which hummed and flickered irritably.

_I hate this place…_

She had never enjoyed visiting the ANBU, the Torture and Interrogation Unit in Konoha.

It smelled of blood and fear. Being so far underground, sound bounced around eerily. The sound of her own footsteps echoed back to her in such a way that made her take several nervous glances over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn't being followed.

_Stop acting like a foolish little girl…_

Her hand reached out for the cold steel handle of Unit 4. She turned it sharply and pushed it open with more force than necessary just to make herself feel better.

She entered the large room, squinting at the sudden harsh light. Her eyes adjusted and focused on the bulky silhouette of the most infamous torturer in Fire Country, clutching what looked like a pink watering can. She resisted the urge to laugh as she saw him gently washing the leaves of his favourite bonsai tree. There was just something funny about seeing the most formidable man in Konoha treating a ten inch cherry blossom tree with such affection.

The room itself was in vast contrast to the labyrinth of corridors and cells she had just navigated through. It was clean and clinical with white walls and minimal furniture. The absence of windows was the only similarity to the cold halls she had just come from. Filing cabinets lined one wall with every drawer clearly labelled in red marker pen. It was ridiculously tidy and precise and she had a sudden twinge of guilt when thinking of her own less than organized office.

_If only Shizune would spend more time organizing my files than moaning about my expenditures…_she pondered.

"I know we are supposed to intimidate detainees, Ibiki, but must you really insist on such a primitive scare tactic? A lick of magnolia paint would do those gloomy corridors a world of good!" she said with a sarcastic grin.

Ibiki discreetly manoeuvred the watering can to one side and bowed his head slightly.

"Hello, Hokage-sama." His voice was deep and gravely and he enunciated every syllable in a short clipped fashion, which made him sound impatient even when relaxed.

"Come on then, lets get this over with."

"This way. Follow me."

He led them down an adjacent hallway and towards a cluster of smaller rooms.

"How much trouble have you been having with our latest edition?"

"Formidable chakra levels. So much so that we've had to use S-class sealing techniques. There was also an incident in which the detainee sliced three of our prison wardens to ribbons."

"…So I'll be looking for three new wardens?"

"No, no. They're fine or they will be. They're just naturally embarrassed to have been taken down by a pair of chopsticks."

They reached the door. It was white with a small gold plaque that read: _Top Priority Interrogation Room 2._

As he turned the handle, Tsunade gripped his hand.

"What have you tried so far?"

"Three days without food with minimal water. The sensory deprivation tank for two of those days. No cooperation whatsoever, just like the last one. We've been reluctant to take it further without your express permission, Hokage-sama."

She nodded in understanding and let him open the door.

A large one-way mirror took up the top two thirds of the furthest wall. She looked up at Ibiki, his face rough and craggy. Deep burn marks and gouges punctuated his strong features. His expression was neutral, unmoving, and unblinking.

Tsunade drew her eyes away from the chief interrogator and towards the other half of the room, which was dark and gloomy. She focused her attention on the smaller silhouette sitting chained to a steel table in the middle of the room.

"Is that her?"

"Mm."

"Okay," she sighed heavily. "Turn the lights on."

Ibiki punched the switch on the right hand side of the glass and the fluorescent lighting in the room on the other side of the glass sprang to life.

The girl seated at the table jerked herself upright at the sudden brightness, throwing chained arms over her face, squinting painfully at the invasion of the brightness.

"Are you sure? She looks so young…"

"No doubt about it," came his gravely reply.

Tsunade inhaled deeply, taking in the girl's appearance. The girl's eyes had adjusted. She was staring ferociously towards the glass between them. Tsunade decided that she was beautiful. Long, dark hair fell down her back in soft curls, shorter layers framed her face which was elegant, almost pixie-like with large, high-set almond shaped eyes. They were blue.

For now, though, the beauty was hidden beneath the telltale signs of incarceration, which were written on her face. Her skin was pallid, her eyes were heavily shadowed as if she hadn't slept for days, and her long locks were greasy at the roots, causing her hair to hang flatter than it probably normally would.

The oversized prison uniform washed her complexion out even more, hanging loosely over elegant shoulders. She looked like a child wearing her mother's flannel pyjamas.

"I'm not fucking telling you anything so you can all go to hell!" she spat at the mirror.

Tsunade stared blankly at the saliva running down the glass that separated them.

"Charming girl…"

"I know you're staring at me. I can feel them. I hope your fucking eyes boil in their sockets!"

"I guess we'd better get on with it," Tsunade said, not lifting her gaze from the girl.

"Mm."

Ibiki reached out and passed Tsunade a red clipboard file which she started to flip through, licking her thumb to get purchase on the pages. She waved a hand absently at Ibiki.

"Turn the comm on…"

_click_

The girl in front of them squealed, pulling her knees up to her chin and clamping her hands over her ears as the distortion from the ancient communication system filled the room around her.

Tsunade coughed gently to clear her voice and leaned toward the microphone which jutted out from the wall on a black-coiled spring.

"Manami. No family name. Sixteen years old. Arrested three nights ago for unlawful trespassing in the Konoha archives. Killed two security-nin one of which was under the impression that your were madly in love with him…"

She raised an eyebrow inquisitively at Ibiki.

"…Tut tut. Haven't we been a naughty little girl?" Tsunade's voice had no trace of humour as she turned the page again.

She looked up briefly, trying to gauge the other girl's response who simply threw her hands up in a theatrical fashion, swinging back on her chair dangerously.

"Am I right in thinking that _The_ Legendary Sucker has come all the way down here to talk to little old me?" The girl let out a laugh in a soft singsong way.

"…Because if it's true, I shall be greatly honoured!"

"Who are you working for, Manami?" she kept her voice steady. "Because I have to say, the items you had on your person were very specific, very interesting. Lets see…We have blueprints of Konoha's underground passageways, a floor plan of the Hokage Tower, as well as several documents pertaining to the populous of Konoha's civilian quarter, water supply, electricity, housing, density, and transport. My, you have been busy…"

The girl sat tight lipped, arms folded haughtily in front of her.

"I asked you who you are working for."

"And I told you I wouldn't tell you a fucking thing." The same singsong tone.

"I suppose whoever it is will be missing you by now, wondering what happened to sweet little Manami. This was a risky mission of yours. I'm guessing they aren't going to be too pleased with your performance."

The girl looked up sharply and Tsunade could have sworn their eyes locked through the one-way glass.

"It doesn't matter anymore…"

Nothing smooth or singsong about her tone now…

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that my work here was only a back up. We already have what we need from Konoha and pretty soon my teammates will arrive home, and when they do, Hokage-sama…" she took a long deliberate pause, allowing the static to hiss and charge around her words.

"…You can kiss your precious village goodbye."

Ibiki switched off the comm, looking to Tsunade with a furrowed brow.

"What is you decision?"

"Do what you have to do until you know what she knows. Don't tell anyone yet. This is the second rogue-nin we've discovered in two weeks living right under our noses. They have to be slipping in somehow."

"You think we have a leak, Hokage-sama?"

"I know we have a leak."

"…And the girls life?" he asked evenly.

"Make sure you learn everything you can first."

"I'll deliver the body up to the hospital. We'll see if her corpse is as tight lipped as she is."

"I expect a full report on my desk tomorrow morning. I have a feeling we'll have to act quickly on this one."

"Yes, Hokage-sama."

Tsunade made her way back through the dingy corridors that would lead her slowly to the surface. She kept her eyes on the thickest metal pipe in the ceiling, following its progress up towards the busy city nightlife. Before she pushed open the heavy iron doors and took her first breath of the warm night air, she could swear she heard a young girl screaming.

Looking sideways at the enormous replication of her face and those of her predecessors, she wished - as she had on many occasions - that one of them would just tell her what the hell to do.

The breeze caught her hair, whipping it forward to flutter around her shoulders as she turned to look down on the blissfully unaware houses and busy high streets, their lights twinkling brightly and the dim hum of music from the restaurants and bars travelling slowly up to her ears. Something foreboding and intangible whispered in the back of her mind and she shuddered not for the first time that night. Pushing the uneasy feeling aside, she turned to make the slow decent back down the mountainside towards home, towards bed, and towards a nice glass of sake.


	2. Chapter 1: I only have eyes for you

_Thank you again to my wonderful friend **ShipperTrish** for Betaing!_

* * *

**Chapter 1: **_**I only have eyes for you…**_

_He had never felt so alive. The moonlight picked out the delicate curves of her body as she lay prone before him, whispering silky nothings up into the night sky. The words fell so easily from her rose tinted lips, and when she ran her tongue suggestively over them, he wanted to believe. Oh god, how he wanted to believe those moist little lies. He knew it was all an illusion, that she could never love him. He was prepared to meet death and betrayal at any moment. His senses sharpened, waiting for an attack that never came._

_It was wrong and forbidden. He knew the risks involved, but where his head screamed at him to turn and run, his heart yammered against his ribcage telling him to indulge fully in the warm embrace of the sultry temptress. His hips pushed hard against her body, begging her to relent, to let him enter that world of unreserved passion that he so desperately sought. Her breath against his skin sent the small hairs on his neck springing to attention, intensifying the swollen ache of his…_

Lamppost!

Kakashi sidestepped just in time to avoid slamming face first into the obstacle and praised himself silently that his reactions were still as sharp as ever.

The morning air was bracing and smelt like jasmine. The rich floral scent floated over the town from the bathhouses as Kakashi strolled towards the hospital, one hand stuffed in his flack jacket pocket and one clutching _Icha Icha Paradise_ which was held close to his nose. It was probably the tenth time he'd read it.

Q_uality literature like this didn't seem to age at all..._he thought with a smile.

He had no idea what had made the Fifth Hokage so eager to speak with him, especially at _this_ time in the morning, but he feared her enough to almost arrive on time. He closed the book with a snap and zipped it into the compartment in the inside of his jacket. He gave it a rueful pat against his chest as he skipped up the hospital stairs and turned down the nearest corridor, following the signs for the mortuary. He found Tsunade with Shizune waiting impatiently outside.

"You're late, Kakashi."

He wrinkled his eyes into a friendly smile and awkwardly ran a hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his head defensively.

"I'm sorry, Hokage-sama. I was helping a kitten that…"

"Save it."

He followed her into the room and stood by the door, casually leaning one shoulder against its frame.

Tsunade reached behind him, pulling a white surgical coat down from a coat hanger and put it on hurriedly.

He tracked her across the room as she poured disinfectant over her hands and began washing them vigorously under the cold tap.

Her icy silence continued as she snapped blue latex gloves over her hands and walked over to the large metal drawers on the far side of the room. She pulled one at the bottom row open without much effort and slid the tray out, bringing with it a cloth covered form. She motioned for Kakashi to come closer.

He walked casually over as Tsunade prepared to pull the white cloth off of the body. He heard a slight whimper from behind him as Shizune shifted uncomfortably.

"It's okay, Shizune. You can leave."

"Y-yes, Hokage-sama!"

Tsunade rolled her eyes comically at Kakashi and muttered, "Great medic, but just can't deal with the dead ones," before ripping back the sheet, exposing what had at one point been a very beautiful young girl.

"Hmm," was his only reaction, which disappointed Tsunade a little.

His eyes drifted over her still face, pale like porcelain with refined features. She had a nose that turned up a little at the tip, giving her an elegant look. Her hair was long and full, her cheekbones were pronounced, but didn't make her look hard. Her body was slim and toned. He looked down to see petite milky breasts and a flat stomach. Her hips flared out and tapered back down into long slim legs and he noticed a small brown tattoo on her inner thigh in the shape of an orchid. She really was very beautiful if you ignored the countless burn marks riddling her body or the deep clotted lacerations etched across her stomach. He couldn't help but see that she was no longer a natural color and that she looked rigid, almost like a mannequin. The massive Y incision that split her chest straight down the middle looked neat with sharp unblemished lines, almost like looking at icing on a cake. This unnerved him more than it should after so many years experience with death and torture.

That and the fact that her eyes were missing.

Walking back across the room Tsunade took a seat behind a simple wooden desk and gestured at the chair opposite her.

He complied, but winced as the metal legs of the chair screeched against the tiled floor.

Leaning forward on her elbows and lacing her fingers together, she studied his face.

"We've got a big problem, Kakashi."

* * *

Sakura stretched out as much as humanly possible. She lay on her back running her hands absentmindedly through the grass, enjoying the way it ran through her fingers, parting with a springy crispness. Taking a long strand between her thumb and index finger, she pulled it gently out of the ground and lay chewing the end thoughtfully. She closed her eyes against the bright sunlight and she relaxed under its warm glow, beads of perspiration forming on her forehead, which she wiped away every now and then with the back of her hand. In front of her stood a wooden post which was looking more than a little worse for wear where it had been decimated by twenty or so kunai.

In reality, she should have been enjoying the quiet time of the year, but she'd had no missions at all for the past few weeks and was beginning to feel bored and restless. She'd spent the first week sunbathing and shopping with Ino and enjoying evening meals with Naruto and the others.

In the second week she'd decided, like today, that she should really be training. Earlier this week she had begged Tsunade to allow her to take on even the simplest of missions with no pay, but to her dismay not one cat had gone missing, no houses needed painting, and no children needed babysitting. The hospital had become quiet as well, so there were no operations to sit in on, and after a few days she had started begging that someone would fall flat on their face in front of her just so that she would at least have some cut palms to deal with. She had even started making stupid challenges to spice things up a bit. Like blindfolding herself, spinning around on the spot, and then trying to hit a target at twenty meters. When this led to the near-death of an innocent rabbit yesterday, she had decided that it was probably time to go back to sunbathing.

A shadow dropped across her face and she opened one eye, instinctively shielding it from the sun with her hand.

"Morning, Sakura-chan!"

"Argh! Naruto, please find me something interesting to do! I am so bored!"

She drummed her heels into the soil in a mock tantrum before sitting up on her elbows and giving him a half smile.

He beamed back, offering her a hand up which she took and pulled herself up, dusting grass off of her back and smoothing her skirt down.

"Sakura-chan, it's your lucky day!" he reached into the back pocket of his pants, pulling out a "two for one" ramen feast at Ichiraku's. The little yellow ticket was tatty and crumpled and had obviously been hoarded for a special occasion. He brandished it proudly in triumph before slipping it back into his pocket and putting his palms up to the back of his head and interlacing his fingers. His face looked a little downcast at her obvious disinterest, but when she nodded and muttered "Okay then," he gave her his best beaming smile and they strode off towards the ramen bar arms linked, giggling in the summer heat.

* * *

Kakashi nodded, making sure he'd taken in all the information.

"When will you leave?" Tsunade asked him.

"Straight away. It will take us two days to get to the border."

"Remember, this will be largely recon, so try to avoid violence unless absolutely necessary."

"I understand, Hokage-sama."

She passed him a small silver scroll across the table, which he took and placed securely in his weapon's pouch.

"Remember not to open it until you are a fair distance from Konoha. I can't have anyone finding out where you are going and what you are up to. I don't think you'll be followed, but that's why it's important to act as if this is only a simple B-rank mission. Don't even tell your team it's anything other than that. Are you happy with the selections you've made? I wouldn't have thought Naruto wouldn't be the best choice for a stealth operation…"

"Sure, he's not the most subtle of characters…" he said with a wry smile, "But he's the number one ninja at surprises. Maybe he'll surprise us and be quiet for a change."

In reaction to Tsunade's blank look, Kakashi reverted to a more serious tone.

"Sakura fits the brief and her medic training is a bonus. Also, Sai, for obvious reasons, will be an asset in stealth and information gathering, though I understand he isn't the easiest of characters to work with, but I'm sure I'll manage." He gave a half smile before lowering his voice to a more serious tone. "It's unlikely, though, that we will be able to complete this without some bloodshed."

"I understand that, Kakashi."

He stood up, making a polite bow and turned towards the door, taking another quick glance at the body still lying uncovered in the corner of the room. He walked out the door, out of the hospital, and into the bright sunshine.


	3. Chapter 2: Embarrassment

_AN: Beta'd by __**ShipperTrish**, because she is AWESOME!_

**Chapter 2:**_** Embarrassment.**_

The restaurant quarter of Konoha was always busy for lunchtime. People filled the tight streets, pushing and shoving to get by. Sakura hung on tightly to the back of Naruto's jacket as they weaved in and out of the crowd towards Ichiraku's ramen bar. She looked up at the patterned canopies and marvelled at the brightly coloured paper lanterns, which swung in the midday breeze. The smell of a hundred different flavours bombarded her senses as they squeezed past sushi bars, fish restaurants, delicatessens and teahouses. She turned her nose up in disgust as she passed a stall of frozen fish heads which gawped up at her as flies swarmed over their glassy eyes. The stallholder gave her a smirk as he wiped a greasy hand on his stained apron before taking a long drag on a self-rolled cigarette. She was further repulsed when he tried to pinch her bottom.

_Don't punch civilians…_she thought bitterly, giving him the fiercest look she could muster through her shock.

They turned down the next alley and onto its adjoining street where the crowds thinned, allowing her to see the striped canopy of Ichiraku's which was thankfully quiet and welcoming with its simple wooden stalls and clean counter.

"Morning, Naruto!" Ichiraku said with a wide smile.

"Morning, Ichiraku!" Naruto beamed as he thrust the little yellow ticket into the old man's hands. "Two ramen feasts for me and my gal."

"Naruto!" Sakura growled.

"HA, HA! I was just um…err…" His nervous laughter trailed off and he quickly guarded his vital organs.

"I mean, two for me and Sakura-chan."

She giggled despite herself.

"Coming right up!"

Naruto's stomach rumbled in anticipation as heaped ladles of miso ramen were poured into two bowls, noodles and bean sprouts slopping over the edge as Ichiraku masterfully added fresh leafy sprigs of coriander and a boiled egg to the top.

Sakura noticed her own stomach clench a little as the large bowl was sat down in front of her.

"Itadakimasu!!" they both chorused, breaking their chopsticks and digging in.

She listened patiently as Naruto recited what he had been doing the last couple of days through a mouthful of noodles and tried to control her temper as specks of miso soup hit her face and top. She found herself relieved that even he had run out of things to amuse him and had resorted to playing practical jokes around town.

"I thought you'd grown out of that, Naruto," she mumbled, trying not to look too amused as he gave an in-depth description of the last trick he'd helped Konohamaru play on Tsunade involving superglue and a sake bottle.

"She didn't get it…I don't know…_slurp_…I had to spend the day back at the Academy as Iruka's class assistant teaching brats… like I was ever _that…slurp…_ bad…" Naruto finished up his bowl and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Without hesitation he raised his arm up high in one sweeping motion, announcing as if to the whole street, "Old man, another miso ramen!"

It was then that Sakura felt a hand on her shoulder followed by a soft...

"Yo."

* * *

Sai sat by the riverbank, watching the people of Konoha crossing over the bridge above him. He watched quietly as a young woman struggled with overflowing grocery bags. Her skirt hitched up on the breeze, exposing white panties which she hurriedly tugged back down, causing her to drop the bag so that its contents spilled all over the wooden walkway. A lemon and two apples rolled out and slipped through the bars, landing in the water with a loud _plop_. He heard her curse loudly and she scooped the rest of her groceries back into the brown paper bags.

A man about the same age stooped down to save another apple from drowning and sat on his heels in front of her, passing her the rest of her groceries item by item: a box of tissues, a large bag of rice, a now misshapen cake. Sai saw their hands brush accidentally as the man passed her the last item, which caused her to blush.

She stammered a brief "Thank you," allowing him to help her up.

They paused, studying each other's faces for what seemed like a whole minute before he said, "Let me help you with those. Where do you live?" in what Sai guessed was supposed to be a casual manner. He followed them with his gaze until they moved out of sight, watching the woman talk animatedly to the man with a warm smile, the blush still clinging to her cheeks.

_Interesting…_Sai thought and tried to mentally list the emotions he had just witnessed:

Embarrassment indicated by the fierce red that had fired up under her cheeks.

Gratitude at the help the man had given her.

Awkwardness while wondering what to say to each other.

And another…

Lust perhaps?

He thought about the _Icha Icha_ series, which Kakashi had seemed to find so interesting and educational, and made a mental note to pick one up in hopes of understanding such puzzling exchanges.

He turned his attention back to the task at hand and focused on the canvas in front of him. He had painted the scene opposite of him almost photographically: a moored boat with water gently lapping at its hull, a large bough of cherry blossoms cascading over the stonewall behind it.

A thought occurred to him and he decided to change the boat's paintwork from blue to red. He took a black ink brush out of the pocket of his rucksack and carefully inscribed the bottom right hand corner with neat calligraphic handwriting that said "Embarrassment."

That's when he heard a small familiar voice behind him say, "Sai, the boat is blue, not red."

* * *

"Yo."

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"I thought I might find you both here. I need you to go home and pack supplies for a three day mission."

"Alright! Finally, a mission!" Naruto stood up excitedly, forgetting his half eaten second helping of ramen, a single noodle dangling ungracefully from the corner of his mouth. "What is it, what is it? Are we handling top-secret information? Protecting a princess from some faraway land? Please say we'll be fighting a group of S-class mercenaries, Kakashi-sensei! Or we could be…"

"Calm down, Naruto." Kakashi said, his voice quiet, but still possessing an authoritative tone. "I'll tell you everything on the way. Just meet at the gates at three. I want to get a good five hours trek in before dark."

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said, biting her lip lightly. "Is it a dangerous mission?"

"No, no. Quite simple."

She felt her heart sink a little at this. It had been awhile since she'd had a challenge.

He continued. "Just a B-rank mission, so bring minimal equipment. We'll be staying in a few towns overnight, so bring a little money. Do either of you know where I can find this Sai guy?"

"I'll get him. He'll either be in the library or painting." Sakura said, then she nodded politely and gave Naruto and Kakashi a quick smile before leaving.

She made good time through the town, which was noticeably less crowded. Families were either at home eating with each other or were filling the restaurants of the food quarter. She was planning to head for her apartment and find Sai once she'd packed, but had spotted him as she walked over the bridge toward the housing district. She gracefully jumped over the thick red railings and picked her way down the grass bank to join her teammate on the river side.

"Sai, the boat is blue, not red."

"I know, Sakura-chan," he replied softly without looking up.

"And you've titled it!"

"My books have told me great paintings are not necessarily dependent on the skill of the artist, but on how well an artist can convey emotion. I _felt_ like it should be red."

He stressed the word "felt" as though it were unfamiliar.

"…And you were the one who told me that I should title my work," he finished with a pleasant smile.

"It's a great start, Sai-kun. I think it's very beautiful. Come on, we have a mission."

She stared intently at the picture before her and felt honestly touched by his explanation, smiling slightly on how far he'd come since their initial meeting. Most of the time she wanted to hit him for his inappropriate comments and bad language. His reliance on stupid psychology and social study literature drove her around the bend, but the smile that was always plastered on his face had started to seem more genuine lately and she was comforted by the fact that he was trying so hard to learn. He hadn't called her ugly for at least a month - that on its own was an improvement. She couldn't help but feel a little sad around him because despite the obvious fact that they were completely different, he still reminded her of Sasuke.

She wondered what had happened to make the boat feel so embarrassed.

They'd walked together for some time, hardly speaking.

Sai didn't feel awkward around Sakura. He didn't completely understand the concept of _enjoying_ someone else's company, but he definitely didn't dislike having her around. She was patient with him and always gave him advice in understanding others and their intentions. Granted, she could be irrational and unpredictable, but she was direct about her emotions on the whole. He often understood he'd done something wrong because she would hit him, plain and simple. Physical pain was much easier to translate than being ignored or spoken to in riddles and hidden agendas.

They'd parted ways outside Sakura's apartment and she walked up the three flights of stairs quickly, thrown her front door open, and started tearing through the chest of draws in her bedroom hurriedly. She threw undergarments and a change of clothes quickly into a tatty rucksack, and stripped off completely in the center of the room, kicking her clothes into a pile in the corner thinking, _I'll clean them later._

She moved into the bathroom turning on the shower and giving the boiler a quick smack before it hummed and hissed into action. She stepped under the hot water, letting it soak through her pink hair and leaned her forehead against the tiles, breathing in the hot steam. She washed herself quickly and thoroughly before turning the shower off and towelling herself down. She wiped away steam and condensation from the mirror and studied her face. To her, her forehead still looked enormous and looked even bigger with wet hair.

_I was hoping I would have grown into it by now…_she thought miserably before opening the towel up to study her bare breasts. She squeezed them together with her arms experimentally, noticing with disappointment that it didn't really do much to enhance her cleavage. She rocked up and down on the backs of her heels, watching as they jiggled gently in the mirror. Frowning ruefully, she took a roll of bandages out of the bathroom cabinet and started to bind them tightly.

_No wonder they never seem to grow_…

Sighing, she walked back into the bedroom and got dressed into fresh clean cloths, pulling the tight lycra of her training shorts up underneath her skirt and strapping her weapons pouch securely to her right leg. She ran her hand through her wet hair and tied her forehead protector across the top of her head to keep the wet strands from sticking to her face.


	4. Chapter 3: A sense of humour

_Beta'd by **ShipperTrish** ^-^_

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* * *

  
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**Chapter 3: **_**A Sense of Humour**_

When she arrived at the Konoha gates, Naruto and Sai were already there standing several meters apart. Sai was smiling brightly, standing rigidly at attention while Naruto leaned back against the large stonewall, scuffing his feet into the sandy road, sending plums of dust dancing around his ankles. He shot Sai the occasional dirty look that went completely unnoticed much to Naruto's obvious annoyance.

Sakura rolled her eyes and prayed that they'd be able to get along over the next three days without too much difficulty.

Kakashi, of course, wasn't present. After years of experience with his tardiness, his absence didn't even occur to Sakura's mind. She walked over to where Naruto was standing and pushed her back against the wall and allowed herself to slide down its rough surface so that she sat at Naruto's feet. Unstrapping her weapons pouch, she brought it onto her lap and started meticulously sharpening several of her kunai with a smooth piece of flint. She held each one up to the light, checking that the shine of metal was uniform and flat before testing the bite of the blade against her thumb.

Naruto gave her a sideways glance before opening his own weapons pack and taking out his own kunai and flint. He struck the two together, trying to emulate Sakura's actions. After the third time, he swore after stabbing himself.

Sakura held out her hand, palm up, gesturing with a curl of her index finger.

"Sakura-chan, what would I do without you?" he asked, grinning while sucking his thumb aggressively. He placed his own weapons pouch into her waiting hand and watched her work.

It hadn't taken her long to work out that standing and getting irate about her teacher's time keeping never got her anywhere and now she automatically found little things to do to pass the time.

When Kakashi finally turned up, they had already been waiting for an hour.

Sai had slumped to the floor and now sat cross-legged opposite Sakura and Naruto, watching her sharpen the last kunai 'til small blue sparks jumped off the flint.

Satisfied, Sakura stood up, brushing dust off her legs and bottom and reattached her weapons pouch.

"Kakashi-sensei! We have been here for hours…_again_! You said we'd g…"

"My bad, my bad," he said, holding his hands up with a lazy smile before roughly rubbing Naruto's hair. "There were some things I had to collect first. These missions take planning, Naruto."

"But…"

"Come on!" he called over his shoulder before breaking into a quick sprint.

They picked up their bags, sighing exasperatedly before ducking into a run, hammering the pace out in an attempt to catch up.

Sakura gave a quick glance over her shoulder at the city wall behind her then doubled her efforts so as not to fall behind.

The pace Kakashi set was punishing. They ran full pelt for the first three hours of the journey and he refused to let them take a break, saying that he wanted to put good distance between them and Konoha before nightfall. Even though the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, the day hadn't seemed to cool down at all and to make matters worse, the air was thick and humid, making it harder to breath.

When he finally let them take a break to replenish their water supplies, Sakura could barely stand. She slumped into an undignified heap on the edge of the riverbank and panted in hard ragged breaths. Her muscles burned with the unfamiliar excursion and she cursed herself for not maintaining her general fitness over the last few weeks. Even Naruto who had the stamina of a nine-tailed demon fox looked exhausted as he stretched out his muscles against a nearby tree stump.

She closed her eyes tightly, trying to regulate her breathing, but only found herself overcome by an overwhelming sense of nausea which she tried to push down. A sudden clenching in her stomach told her this was futile and she was soon bent over double retching into the grass beside her. The hot sour taste of bile filled her mouth as Ichiraku's miso ramen evacuated itself from her stomach and she instantly regretted eating anything at all. Her vision swam with little green dots and she pinched the bridge of her nose to try and relieve the tension. Something cold pressed against her shoulder and she turned to see Kakashi holding a water bottle against her, his eyes focused on some unseen landmark directly in front of them. She snatched it, flicking the cap off and guzzled the cold fresh liquid down quicker than she should, allowing a lot of it to miss her mouth and flow down her chin and neck. She snapped the cap shut and pressed the bottle against her forehead gasping, finally gaining a little self-control.

"Thank you, Kakashi-sensei."

"Hm," he nodded gently without looking at her.

"How much longer do you think they'll follow us?" she said quietly.

His body stiffened slightly, very slightly, before relaxing back into his lackadaisical posture.

"Observant as ever, Sakura."

She watched the contours of his mouth shift into what looked like a grin underneath his mask.

"What do they want? Why haven't they attacked us yet?" she hissed, trying to keep her voice calm.

"They'll get bored soon enough. It's nothing to worry about. We need to get moving. Your legs will atrophy if you don't stretch them out properly."

He cocked his head and looked her directly in the eyes, his own eye dark and unreadable as he handed her a handkerchief.

She took it with a puzzled expression, which dissolved into a blazing red blush as she realized that her cleavage was sopping wet from spilling the water down herself.

"Keep it," he mumbled, lifting a hand up at her as he went to locate her two teammates.

Kakashi had slowed the pace down a notch after that. He allowed them to take small breaks to drink water and sooth their aching muscles.

An hour later, Sakura felt the chakra signatures that had been trailing them since Konoha fade until she was sure they had given up and gone home, whoever they were.

Kakashi allowed them to slow to brisk walking as the roads got thinner and the tree line became thicker. The light had slowly begun to ebb away when he finally decided that they should look for a suitable place to make camp.

They had found a small clearing in the dense forest about half a mile from the roadside. Naruto and Sai went in search for dry kindling wood while Sakura got to work on chopping larger branches into small logs. She drew her hand back, focusing chakra into the tips of her fingers before striking the large tree bough with precise sharp jabs. The wood splintered and cracked easily due to the lack of rain in recent weeks and soon she was hauling armfuls of perfectly cut logging back to the clearing.

The fire spluttered and cracked fiercely as the sunlight faded. Soon the sound of bird song was replaced by the insistent chirping of crickets in the undergrowth around them.

Kakashi handed them each a rice ball and sat cross-legged in front of the fire next to them. They each gratefully took the ration and tucked in.

Sakura chewed the bland rice thoughtfully, swallowing it down with long sips of water as Naruto chattered away to no one in particular about how he was going to single handedly obliterate the enemy. She eyed Kakashi who was sitting in silence, his head firmly back in the pages of one of those _Icha Icha_ books.

"Kakashi-sensei, who were the men following us this evening?" she didn't need to raise her voice as Kakashi sat only a few feet away.

She noticed Sai's gaze was also trained on their teacher, his poise rigid and trademark smile completely missing from his face. So he'd noticed, too.

"Huh? Following us?" Naruto asked, looking from Sai to Sakura to Kakashi then back to Sai. His forehead pinched into a quizzical frown as he, too, turned his attention to Kakashi who let out a deep sigh, closed his book, and placed it on the grass next to him. He brought his elbows down onto his knees and interlaced his fingers, bringing his chin down to rest on his thumbs. He looked at each of them in turn before settling on Sai.

"Root," he answered simply.

"Root? I thought that Root was disbanded." Sakura said, looking at Sai and Kakashi in turn.

"They were, but that doesn't mean there aren't operatives still loyal to Danzo working under a similar regime. The fact that Sai was placed in Team Kakashi with a secret mission says as much. It would be naive to think that Sai was the only person Danzo used in such a way. Someone was keeping an eye on us, making sure we were going where we said we were."

"Why? And why have they left? Why aren't they still watching us?" she stammered.

"Because I'm with you." Sai said, his voice monotone. He never lifted his gaze from Kakashi. "Root has been following Konoha teams for several weeks now. I don't know why, but we were told to inform Danzo of any unexpected developments."

Sakura shifted her weight onto her other side, feeling suddenly unnerved and uncomfortable by the sudden tension.

"That's why you requested me, isn't it, Kakashi-sensei? Because you knew the ANBU Root division would leave you alone if I was with you."

A long silence seemed to stretch out before them and Sakura noticed even Naruto was paying attention, his blue eyes were wide as he tried to make sense of this revelation.

_What the hell is going on?_ he thought.

After awhile, Kakashi visibly relaxed and stretched, rubbing the back of his head with a large callused palm.

"Heh, well you've got me!" his eyes wrinkled into a wide amused smile. "This mission isn't really a simple B-class. We're doing something a little more dangerous here."

"Dangerous?" Naruto whined, squinting his eyes at the new information he was struggling to follow.

"We have some rather disturbing intelligence that could threaten Konoha. We don't have the full picture and we can't have Danzo sticking his nose in just yet. The Hokage is also a little suspicious of his sudden interest in our missions as of late. That's why Sai is here, so that Root assumes we're already being watched and leaves us to do our job. I have yet to make any relationship with you, Sai, but I believe that Naruto and Sakura know and trust you now, so I'll use their good judgment and also put my trust in you."

"I see." said Sai, his false smile returning to his lips as he nodded in understanding.

"Sai is part of Team Kakashi now!" piped up Naruto. "He's been working hard to overcome that stupid emotion training, he's learned loads of stuff like working in a team, and he stopped calling Sakura-chan ugly and…"

"And you're dickless." Sai cut in.

"AH! Don't act like such a bastard when I'm defending you!"

Kakashi stared through the flames at Sai.

_Nevertheless I will be watching you closely, _he thought darkly.

­­

* * *

­As hard as they tried they couldn't get Kakashi to divulge anything else about the mission. He remained adamant that he would wait until they had crossed the Fire country border before they needed to know the fine details.

After an hour of persistent bullying, Sakura and Naruto finally gave up and she lay down, resting her head on her arms, looking up at the night sky through the trees.

Naruto busied himself poking the fire with a stick, watching the logs slowly dissolve into papery embers.

Sakura started with a jolt when she heard the first long droning note of a harmonica echo out from behind her. Sitting upright with eyes wide, she spun her head around to see Sai holding the little instrument in his lips and listened in awe as the hauntingly melancholy tune floated up through the trees.

"Sai-kun! I didn't know you could play!" she exclaimed in a giggly and delighted voice, an enormous smile spreading across her face.

Kakashi looked up from his book, looking quizzically at Sakura. It had been a long time since he'd heard such an innocently gleeful tone of voice from her, since before the original Team Seven had disbanded. It gave him a nostalgic twinge in the pit of his stomach. She'd grown up a lot in both ability and maturity over the last five years, but it was refreshing when on rare occasions he could almost see the same feeble twelve year old he had first started teaching shine through.

"I would consider myself excelling in most forms of art, Sakura-chan. Music is just something else I'm technically proficient at."

"Ah? That's so cool, Sai! But could you play something a little happier?"

"Happier?"

"You know, like more upbeat! Faster." She started clapping her hands together rhythmically, nodding her head at him to indicate an appropriate tempo.

He frowned a little before bringing the instrument back over his lips and proceeded to blow out another livelier tune.

Naruto nodded in encouragement, scooting over closer to his two friends before a horrified expression of recognition crept over his features.

"NO!" his face crumpled into a look of sheer revulsion.

"Not the Konoha National Anthem!!" he shouted, clasping his hands over his ears and writhing on the ground in obvious pain.

By this point Sakura was in hysterics, gripping her stomach tightly and wiping her watering eyes with the back of her hand. She could swear she saw a mischievous flicker of a smirk flit across Sai's lips at Naruto's obvious discomfort.

Sai paused after finishing, then brought the instrument up to his mouth once more and started to play something neither Sakura or Naruto recognized. The song gathered momentum and soon Sakura and Naruto were clapping along in time.

Sakura felt herself being dragged up by the shoulders as Naruto pulled her into a clumsy embrace.

"Naruto! What are you doing, you idiot?!"

Before she knew it, he was spinning them around the fire in some sort of manic waltz. She threw her head back and giggled as he upped the pace, twirling her around by the hand, making her feel dizzy and lightheaded.

They fell into rhythm with the music, stamping and jumping in time.

She stifled a laugh with her hand as Naruto bought out some of his best disco moves and looked across to Kakashi who was eying them in suspicion. She ran over to him with her hand outstretched, trying to catch her breath through her laughter.

"Come on, Kakashi-sensei!"

"No." he said flatly, his dark grey eye full of disgust.

"Aww, come on! Don't be so boring!" she stuck her hands on her hips and pouted. "Please, please, please!" she turned on the puppy dog eyes, knowing it was a cheap shot.

"I don't dance," he paused, turning his head to one side, "...Ever."

"Well, you're going to have to learn!" she said, her eyes glinting darkly as she leaned forward and grabbed his arm, pulling him onto his feet with ease and dragging him over to where Naruto was still dancing.

"Sakura, can't you find something more useful to do with your monstrous strength than traumatizing your poor old teacher?" he mumbled with hunched shoulders as Naruto and Sakura pulled him around the fire in ever increasing circles.

Sai watched the scene unfold before him with keen interest. The sight of his superior reluctantly "dancing" with his two young teammates was very bizarre. He knew Kakashi had the ability to escape the situation if he really wanted to, so Sai concluded he must have been secretly enjoying himself. He felt the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement and thought with surprise that he was starting to understand something about humour.

* * *

The next days trekking was hard work. Even though they moved at a much slower pace than yesterday, the terrain had started becoming tougher: soft grassy plains gave way to rocky uneven earth, hills became steeper and taller, gullies deeper and damper.

They'd spent that night with little shelter from the cold, stiff breeze and Sakura had woken grumpy after only two hours sleep with sharp rocks digging into her back. She sorely wished Yamato had been with them to erect some masterful wooden hut and glared angrily at the three men who seemed completely unperturbed by the situation.

They had come to a small badly surfaced road, which they had decided to follow for awhile.

Kakashi seemed to know where he was going and Sakura's sense of direction lead her to believe they were nearing the northern border of Fire Country. Sure enough, they soon reached a weather-worn signpost welcoming them into the Land of Waterfall.

"We should reach Takigakure before lunch. We'll rest up and buy some provisions, get a decent meal and warm beds, and set out tomorrow morning. Our destination is only three kilometres from there." Kakashi said as much to himself as his teammates.

"And then will you tell us the plan?"

"Yes."

They reached Takigakure quicker than expected and they'd heard it long before that. The thunderous sound of thousands of gallons of water plummeting onto rocks below echoed around the deep ravines for miles around. The presence of such vast quantities of water meant the ground soon became thick and lush with grass and wildflowers. Moss and lichen lined the gullies and ravines, cascading down in thick tendrils. It reminded Sakura of a hanging garden and she had to stuff her hands in her skirt pockets to stop herself from ripping large clumps of expensive medical herbs from the limestone walls. She made a mental note to stock up on the way home.

Nothing prepared them for the sight that greeted them as they turned the corner of the last gully they had been following. The waterfall loomed several hundred feet above them. The gentle breeze carried iridescent sheets of water towards them and billowing clouds of steam obscured the base of where the water hit the rocks. The basin was steep and almost perfectly circular with long carved steps leading round to behind the waterfall.

Naruto and Sakura both inhaled deeply, taking in the magnitude to the landscape.

Sai looked emotionless.

Kakashi looked bored.

Naruto craned his neck up, sweeping his gaze over the hundreds of steps that circled up to the top.

"So Taki is behind there?" he asked Kakashi, his stomach growling loudly.

"Yup."

"Ergh. So…hungry…Okay! It's a race to the top!" Naruto grinned manically, exposing his exaggerated canines.

"Naruto, why are you always trying to make up stupid competitions? You sound like Lee." Sakura snapped.

"I don't sound like Fuzzy Brows! The quicker we get there, the quicker I get ramen. And also listening to you moan about your feet is sapping my positive spirit," he countered with a cheeky grin.

"It's better than listening to your stomach every five minutes. Don't you ever stop thinking about food?"

"Well, at least I _eat_ and don't always worry about the size of my ass!" Naruto stuck his chest out and wiggled his own posterior crudely in Sakura's direction.

"I do eat! And what's wrong with the size of my ass?"

"Okay then, Sakura-chan. I'll race you to the top. Loser buys dinner for everyone." He hesitated before adding, "Either way, you'll lose some of that weight, right?"

Sakura's eyes blazed. "NARUTO!!! You always take it too far!!!"

"No racing." Kakashi cut in, waggling a finger. "You need to conserve your energy if you want to…"

Too late.

They were gone, running full pelt up the stone walkway, taking the steps two at a time.

He watched them through a hooded eye and let out an exasperated sigh.

_They used to listen to me once…_

An orange and black blur was followed by a red and pink one, which caught up in no time and took the lead with long confident strides.

Kakashi and Sai looked at each other with blank expressions and slowly wandered up after them. Kakashi resumed reading and Sai stared ahead, moving with easy grace up the steps.

Naruto and Sakura pulled and pushed past each other.

As Sakura took the lead for a second time, she let out a triumphant laugh, tossing her hair back dramatically.

"Look, Naruto. Now you're going to get the perfect view of my ass _beating you_. I can just taste my free barbecue already!"

Kakashi strolled up the steps with casual ease, admiring the breathtaking view of the gully below. He'd counted three hundred and seventeen.

_Hmm…Prime number…_ he thought absentmindedly as he stepped over the two exhausted heaps lying slumped against the wall, panting.

"I told you to save your energy. Only one hundred and eighty three to go."


	5. Chapter 4: The Land of Waterfall

**ShipperTrish** is amazing for beta-ing this baby! enjoy...

* * *

**Chapter 4:**_** The Land of Waterfall.**_

Behind the blanketing curtain of the waterfall was the entrance to Taki, a sprawling cave system reaching deep into the mountainside. Water dripped down the cold, stone walls of the large antechamber as they walked down wooden walkways illuminated by flaming torches drilled securely into the stone. Large crystal stalactites hung down from the ceiling and phosphorescent lichens shone with a ghostly green glow from small patches between the rock formations. Soon the great expanse of the cave was left behind. The walkway became thinner and darker.

Sakura pulled her arms around her against the sudden chill as they followed the passageway deeper, eventually reaching large wooden gates that filled the cramped space.

Tired looking ninja greeted them asking the usual: How long they expected to stay and their business, which Kakashi said was to establish trade relations between Konoha and Taki. This had apparently been very convincing and they were allowed passage.

When the big wooden gate had opened, Sakura had expected to see an underground maze of chambers and more stone corridors, but instead, she was met with warm air and blue open skies. The large sprawling town below her, apart from the architecture, looked very much like Konoha only a little smaller. The streets buzzed with life and she felt a twinge of excitement shoot up her spine at the prospect of a nice long soak at the bathhouses.

They wandered down into the town, passing market stalls and souvenir shops.

Naruto excitedly reached into his pack, bringing out his fat frog wallet and tapped it eagerly, eying up the shops in search for a ramen bar. He bent down, tightening his sandals and leaning for support against a carved stone statue of a nude woman holding a platter of marbled fruit.

"You filthy little pervert! Watch where you're putting your hands!"

Naruto yelped in surprise as his wrist was seized and the statue started screaming at him, the platter of ornamental fruit clattering onto the stone paving.

"I…I…I'm…sorry…I was j-just…" he stammered in embarrassment as he looked at his palm which was now smudged with silver-grey paint. He looked up with wide eyes as a very human nipple and its owner glared at him in hot rage.

"I'll have you arrested for indecency…No, for assault! Stop looking at them!"

"Sorry, m'am! It won't happen again!" Sakura interjected, giving her the most innocent smile possible while fiercely tugging Naruto away by his collar, his mouth hanging open like a trap door.

Fire-breathers, mimes, and other entertainers lined the streets as Sakura lead him quickly away from the irate spray-painted woman who was now swearing loudly and chucking glass grapes in their direction.

"Naruto, you idiot!" Sakura huffed as they caught up to Sai and Kakashi.

They found a small hotel with three rooms available situated a few minutes walk from the main town. It wasn't particularly luxurious. It was cluttered and a little dingy.

Sakura left Naruto and Sai arguing about having to share a room and made her way up to her own room, which to her excitement turned out to be a double. She threw her bag into the corner and launched herself onto the bed, which creaked and sagged under her weight. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was going to be a lot nicer than curling up on the forest floor. She rolled onto her back and stretched her legs and arms out, trying to touch all four corners. When she found that she couldn't, she laughed happily to herself, drumming her feet on the soft mattress.

With a couple of hours to kill before they'd arranged to meet for dinner, Sakura changed into a simple white tank top and some lightweight linen slacks and walked back out into the bustling town, humming the tune Sai had played on the first night travelling.

An hour later, she emerged from the bathhouse feeling clean and refreshed, her towel-dried hair hanging above her shoulders. She smelled the skin on the back of her hand, enjoying the scent of the honeysuckle body scrub she had used.

_Must get some of that…_

She bought a blue Popsicle from an ice cream vendor and strolled down the street, pausing to look in shop windows at shoes she knew she couldn't afford. She stared longingly at the red patent leather and sucked thoughtfully on the cold lolly, wondering if she'd ever even find an occasion to wear them. She thumbed through the bank notes in her purse, remembering that Naruto and she had lost the race to Sai and Kakashi on the way up to Taki and would have to be splitting the cost of their evening meal. Sighing, she turned to head back to the hotel and bumped face first into the stomach of a man standing behind her. She grimaced as the musky smell of sweat invaded her nostrils. She pulled back, apologizing profusely and tried to wipe away the blue stain of the Popsicle that was now seeping into his shirt.

"I am so sorry," she muttered hurriedly.

"Watch where you're going, you stupid little girl!" he spat out, swatting her hands off him as if she were merely an annoying fly. He was a tall man who towered over her, blocking out the light from the slowly sinking sun. His greasy blond hair was combed over to cover a bald patch that was shining with perspiration. He stared at her through beady, dark little eyes as if she was something he'd just stepped in. His jowls were loose and slack and Sakura estimated that he was as wide as he was tall. For his stature, she supposed he was well dressed, wearing a black suit and tie that screamed expensive. He was dripping in ugly chunky jewelery and Sakura wiped frantically at her face, trying to eradicate the stench of him from her nose and mouth.

"I said I was sorry! You shouldn't be standing so close behind people like that!" she retorted, throwing her hands on her hips and clucking her tongue angrily.

_Nice comeback, Sakura!_ she thought sarcastically, wishing that she had something wittier to say.

He leered at her, looking her up and down, lingering a little too long on her chest and legs before saying, "Well, aren't you feisty?" his thick wet lips curling up into some sort of smile.

She felt her face physically blanch as she spun on her heel and stormed back to the hotel, muttering about how everyone in this town seemed like an arsehole and how she now smelled worse than she did before she visited the bathhouse.

* * *

Kakashi had taken full advantage of the fact that he wasn't paying although he passed it off as a lesson to his two hasty students and he promptly chose the most expensive barbecue restaurant he could see within the square opposite them. Thankfully, it was a quiet night and they'd managed to find a small booth in the corner where they could talk freely without worry of being overheard. He waited till all the food had been brought to the table and the waitress had scuttled away before he began to talk.

"One week ago, an enemy ninja was caught trying to steal important documents from the archives in Konoha: blue prints, general statistical information, that kind of thing. Eventually, the enemy was neutralized and brought in for questioning. What we've learned is vague at best. She was from a base very close to this city and tomorrow night our mission will be to infiltrate that complex and assess how much information has been gathered on Konoha, what scale of attack has been planned, and who our enemy is. That's it. We go in, we get out, we go home."

"It was a woman?" Sakura asked.

"Girl. Only sixteen. She had been sleeping with one of the security guards. She followed him in, slit his throat and that of his partner. What's worse is she wasn't the first. We caught one a while back. We had her for three days, but she used a high level suicide technique before we could learn anything. The Hokage assumed it was a one-off until it became apparent that they were working for the same organization."

Sakura chewed her lip deep in thought while Naruto shifted and fidgeted beside her.

"How do you know the two are connected if the other girl didn't tell you anything?"

"Matching tattoos. Seems to be some sort of initiation brand, a lot subtler than a headband, that's for sure. What worries me most is that people had seen and met these girls over three weeks before either was caught. Perfect sleeper agents. Someone in Konoha let them in. There's no way complete strangers with chakra signatures as strong as those two would have gone unnoticed unless they had help." Kakashi said, stroking his chin lazily.

"So the Hokage assumes Root is behind this and why Danzo is having the Hokage's teams followed." Sai said matter-of-factly.

"It's a theory." Kakashi said. "So tomorrow night as soon as it's dark, we'll make our way over there. I'm partnering Sai and Naruto together and I'll be with Sakura. I'm teaming power types with stealth types to try and balance our strengths to our biggest advantage. Sai, your information gathering skills, I've heard, are phenomenal. Naruto, you'll follow him and be _quiet_. If there's trouble, I want it dealt with quickly and quietly. If it all goes pear shaped that's when you come into play," he gestured at him with a relaxed wrist.

Naruto nodded quietly, enraptured by the magnitude of what they'd inadvertently taken on.

"You're a powerhouse, so I want you to conserve energy until you absolutely need it. Sakura, you're around the same age and height as the girl we caught. So you will be disguised as her. You'll need to take this seriously because we need you to come into contact with whoever is in charge in there."

Sakura's eyes widened and she felt a slight tightness in her chest: Panic.

"We need you to pass over falsified documents so that they don't suspect that one of their girls has been compromised and glean as much information as you can about her mission as possible. Once that's done, I'll meet up with you and we get out of there. I want in and out in one hour."

They all sat in silence for awhile, unsure of what to say.

Sakura wondered if that was the most she'd ever heard Kakashi speak in all the years she'd known him.

So she was going to have to walk straight into the lion's den, pretend to be a girl she'd never met, and convince S-class criminals to tell her exactly what the hell they wanted with Konoha.

_Piece of cake_,she thought grimly.

"If you have a photo of this girl I can practice my Henge no Jutsu until you think I have it accurate enough, Kakashi-sensei, but talking and acting like a girl I don't even know is asking a li-"

"We won't be using Henge no Jutsu, Sakura," he cut in. "I have a better technique that I'll go over with you before we leave tomorrow night. It'll be fine. Don't worry about it. I'll be only a few rooms away from you at all times, I promise." He gave her a kind, reassuring smile through his mask, which made her feel fractionally better.

Walking back to the hotel seemed to take forever. Her limbs felt heavy and tired. Her mind kept churning over and over the few details she had to go on. She groaned inwardly and suddenly wished she were back in Konoha, struggling to find things to do. Yes, shopping with Ino sounded very appealing right now. Her brain just kept spinning over Kakashi's words, over the way he'd tried to pass off a relaxed smile. The way he'd…hang on a minute!

She broke into a brisk trot, leaving Sai and Naruto trailing behind her. She drew alongside Kakashi, trying to match him stride for stride.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yes, Sakura?"

"How did you clear your plate at the restaurant? I mean, I saw you take your share of the food, but I didn't see you eat it. Your mask didn't come down at all. How do you do it?"

He looked at her quizzically and chuckled.

"Sakura, I'll tell you what," he replied smoothly. "If we get through this in one piece, I'll tell you how I do it."

She gave an excited squeak before asking, "If we get through this in one piece, can I _see_ it?"

"No."

* * *

Sakura lay back on the saggy mattress fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling.

The room was completely silent apart from the gentle _whoomp, whoomp _of the slowly rotating fanlight.

She couldn't sleep. Her mind was just too preoccupied. She was a terrible actress and probably the most unconvincing liar in Fire Country. She'd always prided herself on being honest and hard working. She had no idea how she would pull off such a covert operation and felt a little bitter about having to shoulder most of the responsibility. She felt hot and sticky despite the fact that the air conditioning was chucking out cool air ten to the dozen and considered taking yet another cold shower just to give her something to do.

When she heard the gentle rapping at her window, she jumped so high that she fell in an uncomfortable heap on the bedroom floor with a sickening thud, cracking her knee against the ugly orange carpet.

"Dammit!" she hissed, rubbing her leg angrily and squinting up at the window. Picking herself up, she sauntered over, limping slightly to slide open the glass which creaked noisily in defiance. The warm night air filled her lungs as she peered out at the blond haired ninja who was hanging onto the drainpipe fiercely.

"What the hell do you want, Naruto?! It's ten thirty! We've got a busy day tomorrow!"

She looked down into the street to see Sai waiting patiently under a streetlight. The pale features of his face were illuminated brightly as he stared up at her. He'd replaced his normal attire with one of Naruto's brightly colored orange t-shirts which hung a little big on him. The corners of her mouth flickered into a small grin at the sight. She'd never seen him wear anything so loose fitting before. It was bizarre, like seeing a little boy dressed up in daddy's clothes.

"Shhhhh!!" Naruto hissed, pressing his index finger to her lips. "Sakura-chan, Sai and I are going to check out the nightlife. Wanna come?"

"Are you insane? Kakashi said we had to be well rested for tomorrow. I've got a splitting headache from worrying about this stupid mission and the last thing you two should be doing is going out partying!"

"I know you can't sleep when you're worrying, so let's take our minds off it and have a good time! And we aren't leaving tomorrow until dark, so you can sleep all day." He hushed his voice a little, but probably not enough. "Don't leave me on my own with him! Please…"

She looked a little doubtful.

"Please?" he said again, scrunching his face into what was supposed to be an appealing look. "When's the next time we'll be in a strange city with time to kill and a big wad of cash?" he declared with a feral grin, brandishing his frog wallet which was now looking slightly thinner after the meal. His hand slipped slightly on the drainpipe as he tried to maintain his balance.

"Have you ever thought of opening a bank account and saving your money, Naruto?" She rolled her eyes, but her disapproving expression softened a little. "I suppose you're right. I could use something to take my mind off tomorrow, but just one drink!"

She hoisted herself up onto the windowsill, gripping its frame tightly and gave a last regretful look at her double bed before slipping out and falling gracefully onto the concrete below. She waited patiently for Naruto to shimmy back down the drainpipe then linked her arm with his.

They strolled over to where Sai was standing and she offered her other arm to him with a raised eyebrow.

He looked down at it, a small frown creasing the skin above his nose before gingerly looping his arm through hers. He tugged the link at their inner elbows experimentally before nodding his approval and the three of them fell into step, strolling casually down the quiet roadside.

After a few minutes walk, the streets became thinner and the buildings lining them taller. Apartments with overhanging balconies were stacked almost haphazardly on top of storefronts. Intricate wooden latticework cast patterned shadows across the slated walkways. Thin brick chimneys that shot up into the starry sky sent up thin tendrils of smoke, which drifted idly across the town giving the night a faint yellow glow. The smell of fried tempura and noodles wafted down the alleyways, seeming to permeate every nook and cranny of the red brick buildings.

Sakura breathed in the complex smells and sounds, marvelling at how every town she had visited always seemed to have its own distinct set of aromas.

Naruto spotted a small tavern, which was squeezed in-between two large restaurants. A set of small candlelit lanterns framed the doorway and it looked warm and inviting dwarfed against the cold concrete exteriors of the restaurants.

It was crowded and slightly stuffy inside as Sakura's eyes adjusted to the dim light and blanket of smoke that filled the room. She gave Sai's arm an affectionate rub when he started shifting uncomfortably. He was still a little awkward around large crowds after having been trained in practical solitude for most of his life. His gaze darted around the room uncertainly as he tried to adjust to the many expressions and emotions that radiated off the inebriated punters.

She dragged him onto a table in the corner and sat him facing her and the wall so that his over analytical mind wouldn't be questioning everyone's motives.

"What are you having, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked.

"Sake, please!"

"Sake? You really have been spending too much time around Granny Tsunade. Sai?"

"Water with ice."

"Sai-kun! You have to drink something! I am and you aren't supposed to let your friends drink alone." Sakura said, eying him mischievously.

"Oh." His eyebrows pinched together thoughtfully again. "Okay. I'll have what dickless is having."

He slipped a pencil and notepad out of his pocket and wrote down in neat clear handwriting "_Consume alcohol as and when your friends do" _before slipping the notepad back into his trouser pocket.

Naruto brought the drinks back, which sloshed a little onto the table: two large beers and a large ceramic flask of sake.

"A bottle!" Sakura shrieked, already feeling this was a bad idea. She poured the liquid into the accompanying choko cup. "Oh well. Cheers!" she said, holding it up and downing it. The bitter liquid burnt her throat on the way down, instantly warming her body and loosening her shoulders. The aftertaste of rice filled her sinuses and she coughed a little to clear her throat.

"…S-strong," she wheezed through watering eyes.

They chatted about every subject under the sun: How to de-mask Kakashi, how funny it was to almost get him dancing, what their friends were doing back in Konoha. They touched briefly on Sasuke, which had dulled the mood, leaving an uncomfortable silence before Naruto redirected them on his theories of who fancied whom and why, his voice growing ever louder as the alcohol loosened his tongue. Sai remained ever stoic, occasionally offering some clinical observation he'd made about other people's behaviour before growing silent again, nodding once in a while or swearing profusely if he disagreed. When discussion inevitably turned back to the impending mission tomorrow, they grew silent once again and Sakura excused herself to buy them another round of drinks. She pushed back against the table, allowing her chair to squeak against the parquet floor and swayed unsteadily holding onto Naruto's shoulder for support.

"Erg…I fink I'm a lil drunk," she slurred with a giggle as she stumbled to the bar.

"Another cup of sake and two friends for my beers, pleas-h-e," she rested her elbow on the bar and cupped her face in her hand and stared groggily at the mirror behind the bar. God, she looked tired. Straightening up again, she passed a handful of coins to the barman and waited for the drinks and change to be passed back to her.

"Well, well, well!" came a deep, throaty voice from behind her. "If it isn't the little firecracker from earlier."

"Oh, i-it's you," she stammered, looking bleary eyed up into the face of the man she had face planted into earlier.

He had changed his shirt and lost his suit jacket, but she couldn't help but curl her lip up. Even through her drunken stupor, he looked just as lecherous as he had earlier.

"How about I buy you those drinks as an apology for being so rude earlier," he said to her chest.

"How about no 'fanks?"

"Pink hair. I'd love to see if it's natural, hmmm," he drawled, his eyes casting down to her hips. "Unusual. I like unusual. I like feisty. What would it cost for me to secure you're attention for this evening? Come on, everyone has a price."

She felt a sweaty palm snake around her waist and under her top. Her mouth dropped open in outrage.

"Secure this, you ugly toad!" she screamed, pulling her hand back and then thrusting a fistful of drunken chakra straight into his face.

Then, several things happened all at once: The man rocketed backwards, his feet completely leaving the floor as he hurtled through the air, landing hard on a table behind him, which promptly splintered and collapsed, sending glasses and bottles smashing to the floor. She felt her arms yanked tightly behind her back and two men materialized as if out of thin air beside her victim to help him get up. She heard Naruto drunkenly shout the dreaded words "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" at the top of his voice and suddenly the bar was full to the brim with seething drunken Naruto clones who were standing on top of tables, hanging off light fixtures, and lining the walls.

"Let go of her, you bastard!!!" they all chorused, and then the bar descended into absolute madness.

A group of five Narutos ploughed into whoever was restraining her.

She looked up just in time to dodge a large torrent of water that was shot towards her from one of the bodyguards while the other helped his boss off the table and dusted shards of glass off his bloated figure.

The jet connected with some poor unsuspecting guy who was trying to enjoy his pint and was lifted from his seat and smashed unceremoniously against the tavern wall as water gushed and spewed around him.

She saw Sai get smacked hard in the face as inky snakes erupted from his open notebook, constricting their little bodies around the water jutsu ninja, effectively trapping his arms against his waist.

She turned in time to connect her foot with the guy the Narutos were holding firmly by the arms, sending him over the bar and crashing into shelves, sending a torrent of broken glass onto the ninja's shoulders.

They all heard the unoccupied bodyguard turn to his boss and say, "Time to go, Hiroto" and the four of them vanished as quickly as they appeared with a quiet _poof_, leaving Sai, Sakura, and about fifty Narutos to look around them at the water-logged devastation and looks of pure, unadulterated hatred that were being shot their way.

In the awkward silence that followed, a Naruto couldn't help himself and promptly threw up onto the wet parquet floor while another, trying to avoid the projectile liquid, clumsily slipped on a pint glass and careered into a third Naruto who wasn't paying much attention and who then fell into another Naruto, who then fell into another Naruto...creating a haphazard domino rally.

"Crap." Sakura heard her floored blond haired companions mutter in unison.

* * *

Naruto and Sai stood outside the locked hotel doors with Sakura draping one arm over each of their shoulders, her head lolling dangerously to one side.

"Filthy, stupid, pervert," she slurred angrily.

Sai rubbed his bruised cheek, wincing slightly at its tenderness.

"I don't think it would be wise to tell Kakashi-sensei about this," he said flatly.

"Hell no!" Naruto shook his head enthusiastically. His face darkened as he pulled out his now completely deflated frog wallet. "Although I don't know how we're going to afford breakfast, or lunch, or dinner if we don't tell him. Do glasses and tables really cost that much?" he grumbled sadly.

Forming chakra into both their feet, Sai and Naruto started walking up the side of the hotel towards Sakura's open window. They strained and grunted, pulling their intoxicated teammate up with them.

"Maybe she should lose some of that weight." Sai said dryly.

"I heard that."

They hoisted her head first through the window, her bottom hanging out in an undignified manner before climbing through themselves and pulling her up.

"Let's get her into bed and we'll get back to…"

The light flicked on.

Kakashi stood with his arms crossed by the light switch, his back against the wall and his book closed on the desk in the corner.

They stood in silence for a moment, which was broken by an audible gulp from Naruto.

"Bed. Now." Kakashi stated firmly. His voice held a threatening edge that was normally reserved for battle. He crossed the room with three long strides until his chest was almost touching their noses. His headband was discarded in the corner, allowing his Sharingan eye to whirl menacingly at them. He took Sakura out of their arms and they hurriedly retreated to the doorway. When Naruto tried to stumble an apology, he merely glared at them, instantly shutting them up.

With a strained whimper, they disappeared out the door, letting it click behind them.

When they were gone, Kakashi looked down at Sakura with a fierce glare and pulled her roughly into the bathroom. He sat her on the edge of the bath and she slumped with her arms dangling by her side, looking sheepishly up at him. Her teary eyes glistened as words tumbled out of her mouth.

"I-I'm so sorry, Kakashi-sensei. I was just so nervous about the mission and we didn't realize it would get out of hand, and a filthy toad man touched me up and -hic- I…I smacked him in the face…and…and now you must be really disappointed in-n-n me!" she wailed, pushing her face into her hands and sobbing uncontrollably.

He didn't look at her as he walked out the room and she felt the devastation of hurting someone you care about roll over her.

Her head snapped up when she saw him re-enter the room, holding out a glass of water to her, which she took with shaky hands and drank greedily.

He took the glass from her and sat it down in the basin. Turning around, he leaned in closer. He lifted her chin up gently with one hand and removed another handkerchief from his flack jacket pocket and wiped the tears from her face gently.

"You are many things. You are a stupid girl, you are an impulsive girl, and you are a temperamental girl, Sakura, and you'll have a hell of a headache when you get up tomorrow morning."

She looked down at the tiled floor again.

"But..." he continued, raising her head up to look him in the eyes before continuing in a kinder voice, "You are not a disappointment. Just don't let this affect your work tomorrow and I won't have a problem, and don't tell Naruto and Sai I went easy on you."

She bit her lip and smiled up at him. He'd given her a compliment, something he never did lightly.

"Come on, let's get you to bed." He pulled her up by the arms and let her lean her full weight against him as he led her out the bathroom and to the bed.

She swayed against him, feeling the warmth of his body through his clothing. She buried her nose into his jacket, inhaling his scent, thinking how good and safe he felt. Why hadn't she noticed how nice he smelled before? She pondered drunkenly.

He sat her on the corner of the bed and knelt down in front of her to take off her shoes.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yes, Sakura?"

"Thank you for being so nice to me," she mumbled quietly.

"That's okay. Like I said, just don't tell anyone," he replied with an easy smile.

That's when he felt the hot sticky warmth of vomit hit him square in the chest.

"Sorry," she spluttered wetly as she dove off the bed and stumbled back into the bathroom.


	6. Chapter 5: The brown orchid

_**ShipperTrish** is amazing, thank you for Betaing! _

* * *

**Chapter 5:**_** The Brown Orchid.**_

Sakura decided when she awoke that morning that sunlight was the single, most evil invention known to mankind. The light streaming in through the hotel window made her hiss sharply and she rolled over, burying her head in her pillow, groaning as the memories of last night reared their ugly heads and mocked her. She struggled futilely to fall back to sleep, but her stomach wouldn't allow it and soon forced her up and into the bathroom. After half an hour of hugging the toilet, she wobbled over to the bathroom mirror and stared at her reflection with bloodshot eyes. She poked the puffy skin around them, noting the remnants of smudged mascara around her cheekbones.

_Waterproof and long lasting. Yeah, right…_

She ran a hand through her hair, which snagged on thick knots, causing her to curse under her breath. She started in alarm when she noticed the long, black sleeves of a slightly oversized jounin shirt. It hung down just past the top of her thighs and she inhaled the smell on the cuff, which jolted her back to Kakashi: Kakashi not screaming at her, Kakashi wiping her tears away, Kakashi helping her take her shoes off….Kakashi getting puked on.

_Oh god! I threw up on…_

She slapped a hand to her forehead in mortification, trying to push the thoughts out of her head, but they just kept playing over and over again in slow motion. A gallon of sake…all over him…and now worst of all, she was standing in front of the mirror looking back at herself standing in his black shirt.

What the hell happened?

_Please, please don't say I started stripping! _she thought, turning the shower on.

She tried desperately to recall events, but drew a complete blank. Groaning loudly, she turned the lock on the bathroom door out of habit and pulled the shirt up over her head, dropping it onto the cold tiled floor and stepping under the hot water. Soaping up her hands with the hotel's shower gel, which incidentally smelled oddly like nuts, she started kneading the tight muscles in the back of her neck where she had slept funny. She applied a small amount of chakra to the stiffest areas where the nerves had bunched and seized up. They gradually loosened, allowing her to flex and move without pain. She rolled her head around experimentally on her shoulders, wincing a little as her headache flared up angrily.

_Ridiculous! I can fix a broken leg in twenty minutes, lift twenty times my own body weight, but can't even scare off a little hangover!_

She chuckled a little at the irony as she massaged more of the nut-scented scrub into her hair, hoping to eradicate the stench of smoke and sweat that lingered there. She opened the door and reached blindly for a towel, then she wrapped it tightly around herself, using one corner to dry her eyes and face. She tiptoed back towards the mirror, shivering against the cooler air that prickled her skin. She started to brush her teeth, grateful to get the sour, furry taste off her tongue. She checked her reflection again, nodding in approval that she looked and felt fractionally more human.

Padding her way back across the tiles, she picked up the black shirt and folded it neatly before turning the lock and walking back into the bedroom. She placed the shirt on the desk in the corner and walked back to the bed, picking up her rucksack, leaving damp footprints in the orange carpet as she went.

A short, sharp cough behind her made her flinch and she snapped her head around in surprise to see Kakashi standing by the door, clutching a small paper bag.

"Kakashi-sensei! You scared me!"

"I bought you some breakfast."

Her face paled slightly. "Err, thanks, but I'm not really hungry."

He held it out to her with deliberate authority.

"You have to eat, you have to drink, or you'll be useless tonight."

She stepped forward to take it, keeping one hand gripping onto the edge of the towel.

"Thank you," she smiled weakly.

"I have some stuff to take care of, but when I come back I'll need to implement that technique I was telling you about. I'll meet you here at seven. It won't be pleasant on an empty stomach, so eat." Kakashi turned to leave, but as he started turning the handle on the door she stopped him.

"Kakashi-sensei…I just wanted to say thanks for helping me last night and that I'm really sorry, again, especially for throwing up on you." The color in her cheeks reappeared ferociously, which unbeknownst to her, made him grin a little under his mask.

"And I noticed that I was wearing your shirt when I got up…and erm…I was wondering…erm…if…"

"If you propositioned me with a striptease and I ravished you until the early hours, leaving you with a small token of my affection?"

Her face was a picture. She squeaked a little in horror.

"No, nothing like that, Sakura. You threw up and I went and got you a shirt to put on because I didn't want to go rooting through your bag. You changed after I left."

"Then don't go saying stuff like that! It's not funny!!!" she wailed, throwing her hands over her face, then hurriedly put them back onto the slipping edge of the towel.

"How are you feeling anyway?"

"Like I got into a brawl and had to be dragged up the side of a building backwards." She snorted at herself. "Don't forget your shirt." She gestured to the desk.

He nodded, picking it up and giving her a last short grin. He held his hand up in a _see you later _gesture before disappearing behind the door.

* * *

"Did you really have to give her the 'ravishing' line? You've been reading too many of those stupid 'novels,' Kakashi." The little dog that had been waiting patiently outside stared at him suspiciously through a heavily lidded eye.

"Maybe. I thought it was funny." Kakashi replied, walking slowly through the corridor alongside his companion.

"You should tell her to switch back to the Floral Green shampoo I use. It's much nicer. I hate almonds." Pakkun growled, pausing to scratch his ear with a hind leg.

"I'll remember to mention it."

They walked down the staircase and into the lobby, crossing the checkered floor quickly before walking out of the double swing doors. They paid no attention to the stunned receptionist who sat gripping the desk in front of her with white knuckles, or the stammering voice in which she recited over and over "A talking dog? A t-talking dog. Am I going mad? A talking dog..."

Once outside, Kakashi squatted down on the step, letting his wrists hang over his knees so that he could be closer to eye level with Pakkun.

"So you're clear on what to do?" he asked.

"Of course. Establish entrances and exits if possible and give a rough estimate on how many people we have down there."

"Good. I'll see you in a few hours. Be careful." Kakashi leaned forward and gave a rough pat on the pug's head, causing the fluffy folds of skin to furrow further.

Pakkun gave a few playful nips to Kakashi's fingers before barking a farewell and trotting off down the road, his tail wagging energetically.

Kakashi straightened himself up and walked back into the hotel. He paced back though the lobby and into the hotel laundry room to find Naruto and Sai hard at work with the hotel bed sheets.

Naruto looked up grumpily at him, his face dripping in sweat in the hot steamy room.

This is the best punishment Kakashi could come up with. Naruto had an advanced metabolic rate due to the kyuubi, so the hangover would have passed hours ago, and he wasn't even sure if Sai had been drunk in the first place.

Kakashi bit back a chuckle and congratulated himself on his own genius as he watched Naruto struggle to load another bundle of stained duvet covers into the washing machine.

"You know, Kakashi-sensei, if you let me use clones I could get this done much faster," he complained, holding up his pruned, red hands.

"It wouldn't be a punishment then, would it? You need to earn some money back after that incident last night. Otherwise, you'll have no cash for the journey home." He gave a quick smirk before saying, "Have you finished my spare uniform yet?"

Sai walked over, holding a newly pressed jounin flack jacket and a black, long-sleeved shirt and passed it to Kakashi before heading back over to the ironing board.

Kakashi marveled at how the boy could keep such a steady mood even doing something as tedious as this. He held up the uniform to inspect it under the light.

_Perfectly clean and vomit free_, he thought with satisfaction.

"Kakashi-sensei, do you want that to go in the wash, too?" Naruto asked, pointing at the other black shirt that was still in his grasp.

Kakashi bought the garment up to his nose, taking in the subtle feminine scent that still clung to the fabric.

"No, I'll get another couple of wears out of it first. You can stop after the next load, take you earnings, and get some lunch."

* * *

Naruto and Sai had wandered into Sakura's room at about three in the afternoon to find her hungrily wolfing down a fat sphere of onigiri.

She chucked a brown paper bag in Naruto's direction and he gratefully pawed out one of the large stuffed rice balls and started tucking in.

He wandered over to the bed and flopped down besides her, filling her in with gruesome details on the horrors of hotel bedsheets.

She laughed freely and easily at his crude jokes and tried not to rub it in that essentially she had been lying in bed all day watching tacky soap operas on the black and white TV set that was drilled into the wall.

Sai took up a seat by the desk in the corner and took out his notepad and began sketching rapidly, making very few contributions to the conversation.

The hours rolled by quickly and soon they had noticed the lights starting to flicker on outside the window. It was getting dark, which meant soon they would be wandering into the unknown.

A familiar tightness that Sakura always got on missions crawled its way up into her throat, making her swallow and fidget frequently. She lined up their rucksacks on the edge of the bed and began organizing which things they should take in their weapon pouches.

Sai had wandered over to them and sat on the edge of the bed scrutinizing Sakura's organizational skills.

She pried his notebook out of his hands and thumbed her way through the pages.

He didn't object and often asked her opinion on some of the behavioral notes he'd made. The notes were mixed up among quick pencil studies he'd made over the course of their trip.

She found sketches of several of the landmarks across Taki, including a temple, the busy market quarter, and the view from his and Naruto's hotel room. The last freshest page was of her and Naruto with Naruto spreadeagled across most of the bed and her cross-legged, looking laughing down at him. Sai had drawn himself sitting on the windowsill behind them and Kakashi standing in the corner of the room, trademark scarecrow hair sticking up above the pages of a book.

Sakura smiled warmly at the sight, feeling the need to hug Sai, but she resisted, knowing he wouldn't understand the gesture.

"Can I keep this, Sai?"

"Why?"

"Because I don't have a photo of Team Kakashi, only Team Seven. This is just as good."

He took the notepad from her grasp and carefully ripped the page out, handing it to her with a genuine smile.

She folded it up and slipped it into a free compartment in her weapons pouch. She thanked him softly to which he responded with a small nod.

Kakashi had arrived shortly after that and the two boys had excused themselves to freshen up and get ready to leave. His mood seemed a little darker than usual as he made space on the floor and sat cross-legged with his rucksack by his side, rummaging through its contents until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a black kimono, a pair of simple, slightly heeled black sandals, and a long, black, hooded cloak. He passed the kimono to Sakura who examined it carefully. It was pretty, black silk with carefully embroidered gold and pink orchids lacing around the hem and wide cuffs.

She held it up against her body noticing it was, by her standards, very short. She looked at Kakashi and raised an eyebrow.

"That's the girl's. Seems to be some sort of uniform," he said.

"I'm supposed to wear this?" she exclaimed incredulously.

He nodded slowly.

"With leggings on?"

He shook his head, passing another small bundle of black.

"L-lacy panties!" Another bright flush spread across Sakura's cheeks.

She huffed in irritation, muttering that everyone was a pervert and other obscenities under her breath as she stomped back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She threw her clothes and underwear into a corner and stepped into the skimpy underwear, tugging them up roughly and then wriggling into the kimono, securing it tightly under her breasts with the accompanying obi. When she remerged, she stepped gingerly around the doorframe, trying to tug the hem down further than it would go. Thankfully, the gold obi kept the fabric over her chest firmly in place so she only had to worry about overexposing one part of her body. She worried her lip and absently fiddled with a lock of hair behind her right ear.

"Does this look okay? I feel a bit slutty," she murmured, looking uncomfortable and shifting on the spot.

Kakashi looked up from the scrolls and other objects he had been arranging on the floor in front of him and studied her appearance. His lone eye wandered over her body, settling on her legs for a second longer than necessary before nodding and averting his gaze fiercely at something very interesting on the carpet.

_Does she look okay she asks. Does she look okay?! No, not at all Sakura. You look just like something straight from the pages of "Icha Icha," which is obviously the last thing I would find attractive! When did her legs get that long?...Stop it, Kakashi!...God help me if that showed up on my doorstep! Mmm...A nice pair of thigh highs would look...Shut up! She's your student!...I'm only human…Shut up and focus!_

He motioned for her to sit across from him on the carpet and she complied, trying to shift into a position that would not give him a direct look up her skirt.

She watched him as he slowly took off his headband, exposing the eye beneath with its red iris and black tomoe, which rotated slowly and hypnotically.

He unrolled a large scroll across the space between them and formed a series of complicated hand seals above the parchment.

She frowned in confusion when nothing happened, looking up into his mismatched eyes.

"This technique isn't particularly pleasant. For all intents and purposes you will _become_ this girl for a short amount of time. I mean you'll still be you, but this is a forbidden technique and as such has some nasty side effects. You won't be able to use your chakra. At all." He saw the worry crease her brow, but continued. "You'll in fact have _her_ chakra, but you won't have the ability to control it in the time we have. After this is finished, you will look like this girl, talk like her, smell like her and even give off the same chakra signature as her, but this doesn't last very long, three hours at best and when you start changing back, you are going to feel like hell."

"Is this the only way?"

"Unfortunately, I think so."

She nodded slowly, digesting the information.

"Okay, I'm ready. Tell me what to do."

He pulled a kunai out of his pocket, passing it to her.

"We need your blood first. Not much, but more than a pinprick."

She took the kunai and stared at her reflection in the dulled chrome. Inhaling deeply, she cupped the sharp blade in her small fist and dragged the handle down with one quick motion. Dropping the kunai onto the carpet next to her, she squeezed her fist together tightly to force her dark, red blood to seep through her fingers and drip heavily onto the parchment below. Opening her hand slowly, she winced as the deep, bloody slit stretched tightly against the movement of her palm, opening itself to the oxygen in the air and stinging with a buzzing heat. Her eyes widened in amazement as the thick, red splatters started to dance and move across the paper, slowly multiplying and splitting until they formed small, intricate characters which spread in a complex web, spiralling up to the edges of the scroll.

Instinctively, she started summoning healing chakra into the wound, but again Kakashi caught her, holding her wrist gently with an outstretched hand.

"No, you can't heal it."

She flinched back at the militant tone in his voice, feeling slightly angry that he seemed to be acting so cold towards her.

"Well, what next then?" she spat irritably.

He reached over to a small jar that sat next to him that she hadn't noticed until now. Removing the lid with a faint _pop, _he poured the contents into his open palm.

Sakura recoiled in horror as the two glassy orbs looked up at her blankly.

"Oh my G-god!…Are those?..." she choked out, covering her mouth with bloody fingers.

"Yes." He kept his tone deathly even as the eyes in his open hand quivered.

"They're the girl's. They're her eyes, aren't they?" Sakura's voice was full of disgust and sadness. "What did they do to her?" she whispered quietly. The question was rhetorical. She knew the answer.

It was a cold, hard fact that people were captured and people were tortured. The secrets you could learn from a dead body alone were incalculable and as a medical ninja herself, she knew it was all in the eyes.

She shuddered, fighting back a dry heave and trying to compose herself. She trusted the man she was with implicitly and if he said this was necessary, it was necessary.

"You have to seal the scroll, Sakura. You have to seal her into you." Again that clipped, militant tone.

She held out her shaking, wounded hand and screwed her eyes shut as tight as possible. She felt the sticky texture of the objects being placed in her palm and felt Kakashi gently roll her fingers up to enclose around them. She took a final deep breath holding them high above her head and then, upon opening her eyes, sent her hand slamming, palm down into the centre of the parchment.

The reaction was instant. The red characters of the seal bubbled violently off the page and surged up her arm. She screamed, tugging the sleeve of her kimono up to track their swift progress as they spiralled over her flesh. A sudden wave of heat surged through her body and she fell back hard, shaking on the carpet, vaguely aware that she had just given her sensei an eyeful, but soon that didn't matter.

Kakashi shot up in an instant, dragging her head and shoulders onto his lap, steadying her against him.

The inky crimson symbols tore up her neck, soon wrapping around her jawline and then spilling up into her nose, mouth, and eyes.

She started bucking violently against him as the last phrase of ancient writing found its way into her body. Her eyes rolled fully into the back of her head and her nails clawed at the floor, trying to find purchase on something…anything, and then she started screaming, shouting his name over and over in heartwrenching panic, pleading him to make it stop.

He watched in grim fascination as bones snapped and twisted, elongating into their new form. Her pink hair became shadowed, turning a deep, dark brown, which sprouted off her scalp, cascading down around her shoulders in thick luxurious curls. He hugged her closer, not wanting to look as her face distorted, cheekbones angling themselves slightly higher, eyes slanting in an almost cat-like fashion. He forced the fabric of his sleeve into her mouth, telling her softly over and over "Bite down, Sakura. Bite down. Come on, bite down for me. It's going to be okay. I promise it will be okay. Bite down."

The immense pain gave way to heat, heat that started in her belly and pumped its way through her veins, burning out what was left of her. Fierce blue sparks crackled and hissed across her skin, spluttering out of her chakra points in tiny explosive bursts.

She screamed through the fabric "It burns! Please make it stop! It burns! Get her out! Get her out now!!!"

The final set of convulsions overcame her as she writhed helplessly in his lap, her back snapping taut as the final waves of pain subsided, leaving her feeling empty and hollow, trembling against him.

He removed his sleeve from her mouth and her face fell lax. He gently wiped away the froth and spittle from around her nose and lips and waited for her breathing to return to normal, stroking her hair with one hand, telling her again and again that it was over. It was okay.

He let her lay like that a while before helping her up onto the bed.

She swayed unsteadily, her eyes slowly coming into focus with his own.

"Are you alright?" he asked, quiet concern lining his face.

She nodded unconvincingly and forced a small smile. Her breath hitched in her throat as she felt his rough palm run smoothly under the fabric of the kimono, glide up her thigh, loop through the fabric of her panties, and come to a rest on her hip bone. Her hand shot out instinctively to stop its progress, but her body was too weak to resist.

"K-kakashi-sensei…What…"

"Shh...Don't panic. Just hold still."

She felt a nervous excitement spike through body, curling up in the pit of her stomach, followed by a sudden hot sensation as needling energy burrowed into her skin. It was over in seconds and his eyes never left hers.

"There. Done."

Searching his eyes questioningly, she pulled the fabric aside to see a small tattoo of a brown orchid unfolding onto her skin as if it had always been there. The strange sensation lingered long after he had taken his hand away.

He stood up and patted her head affectionately, moving back towards the door.

"You did really well, Sakura. Take some time, pack up your things, and meet us in the lobby when you're done."


	7. Chapter 6: The Ghost of You

_I hope everyone is enjoying this so far! Thank you to those who reviewed, and a BIG thank you to **ShipperTrish** for once again betaing for me!_

* * *

**Chapter 6:**_**The Ghost of You.**_

Sakura gazed at the floor, fighting the overwhelming urge to cry. Why did this feel so bad? The hollow pounding of her heart against her ribcage and the steady rise and fall of her chest was the only indication that she was still alive. Her legs felt useless and heavy, and her mind was desperately grasping for coherent thought. She just felt so...empty. The sensation was similar to the come-down effects of soldier pills, a blistering high filled with unnatural energy followed by a body crushing low that left you fragile and depressed for hours, if not days. And the way Kakashi had touched her? She knew he had just been sealing the technique, putting the final touch to her impenetrable disguise, but it had stirred a reaction in her body that should have been impossible considering the circumstances. Now she wanted that back, the comforting warmth of his hands to sooth her, to eradicate this cloud of depression that felt so heavy on her shoulders. He should have warned her, but she would have only freaked out, probably making the situation a hundred times more embarrassing for the both of them. She looked down into her hands properly for the first time, noticing that the cut was completely healed as if nothing had happened.

She stood up slowly, flexing the weakness out of her knees and wandered back into the bathroom to collect her things. She paused at the mirror, stifling a cry of shock as she realized that this was her reflection. Soft fingers, smooth and longer than her own, reached up to touch the face of the stranger looking back at her. She stroked the unfamiliar contours of her high cheekbones and sharp upturned nose. She stared back at herself with deep sapphire eyes that could match Naruto's for brightness.

When she moved, the reflection moved. She worried her lip and fingered her hair in typical Sakura fashion, noting with interest that the body language she was exhibiting didn't look right on this girl. And she hated long hair. It made her feel like a child again. The overwhelming urge to hack it off to her jawline egged her on silently.

She spoke, testing out the new voice. It was slightly higher pitched than her own, closer to the voice she made when she was trying to get her own way. She rolled over vowels in her mouth, trying to get used to the sound of foreign inflections now present.

Shaking herself out of the trance, she slipped on the heavy black cloak, drawing the hood up over her head, and rammed her feet into the heeled black sandals. She hurriedly gathered her things together, stuffing them roughly into her backpack before running out the door, smacking off the light switch as she went.

* * *

As they walked through town to the northern gates of Taki, Naruto couldn't help sending nervous sideways glances at his female teammate. His jaw had hit the floor when she'd walked into the lobby, waving and smiling at him. Everything about the way she moved screamed Sakura, but nothing about her appearance gave her away.

Sai had stared with interest for all of five seconds and then returned to his normal stoic self, talking to her as if he was completely comfortable with the change.

Naruto, however, was not so collected. He stammered over his words, unsure of how to treat her.

She seemed to be tired and walked beside him mostly in silence, which was fine with him as he found her voice disturbing: too musical, too smooth. It was an odd balance similar to the way in which Granny Tsunade's voice betrayed her years slightly.

The bustle of the town soon gave way to acres and acres of training grounds, which seemed for the most part to be made up of large man-made lakes. The moon reflected perfectly in the eerily still surface of the water.

Kakashi had explained that the Land of Waterfall specialized, of course, in water based techniques, which was why the majority of training took place in or on water.

Sakura thought back to the night in the bar where she had only just escaped being crushed against the wall by a strong water technique. Those ninjas hadn't seemed to offer anything other than that as a form of attack. She wondered what happened to shinobi who were born here with a natural inclination towards other element types. Would they be encouraged for their diversity or excluded for not adhering to the Taki pedigree?

They'd passed through the northern gates with a polite wave to the guards who nodded tiredly, swatting gnats that swarmed around the reeds and bulrushes.

Small stony paths led them away from the light and relative safely of Taki and Sakura felt her shoulders getting heavier with every passing second, a cold nervousness settling in her belly when she looked back and couldn't even see the city lights any longer through the trees.

Kakashi drew them to an abrupt halt with the raise of a hand, his senses suddenly sharp as he scanned the area around them for possible threats. After a while he relaxed and turned to them.

"The base is just over the next rise. Pakkun scouted two entrances earlier. We'll be slipping in the front because, to the best of our knowledge, the place is fairly empty. Pakkun only sensed a handful of people in the actual base, but reported a vaster number had been through here recently, so it's best if we stay on guard."

They nodded.

"And once inside, Naruto, you and Sai are to look for a way down into the lower chambers. That's where I assume they'll keep archived files. I want the file on Konoha. Once you have that, get out and meet us back here. Sakura and I will be on the upper floor. She will go in and hand over the falsified documents." He patted his rucksack. "And I will scout around the rest of the floor to see if there is anything else we need to know. Sakura's transformation won't last very much longer, so we need to be in and out within the hour. Clear?"

Nod.

"Good. Now, Sakura, tell me your name."

"What?"

"Your name. Tell me, what is it?"

She frowned, searching his eyes in confusion. "Sakura?" she giggled timidly.

"No, tell me your name."

"Kakashi, what are you talking about?" Unease in her voice now.

Strong hands grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.

Naruto shot forward to object, but was silenced by a sharp, cold stare.

Kakashi turned his attention back to Sakura, his fingertips digging hard into her skin as he shook her roughly.

"Kakashi-sensei, you're hurting m-me…" A choked whimper.

"Your name. Now!" Hot breath hit her and she cringed back against his verbal assault, tears threatening to spill over at any second. "Come on! I asked you for your name! Tell me your name! Name! Now!"

She started to stammer something inaudible, squirming uncomfortably under his rough hands, her voice cracking in fear. Why was he doing this?

"I can't hear you!" Shaking her harder. "I said, tell me your name! Come on, you stupid little girl! Your name!!!"

Then, something snapped.

"What the fuck are you talking about, you stupid fucking idiot?! Fuck you!" she spat in his face, sending saliva dribbling down his nose onto his mask. Stepping back in shock, she clamped a hand over her mouth, shaking her head ferociously back and forth.

"Kakashi-sensei, I-I'm so sorry! Oh my G-god...I can't b-believe I just…"

He smiled, nodding slowly as if trying to encourage her, loosening his grip on her shoulders and rubbing the small red welts that had started to appear from his thumbs.

"Good. Now we're getting somewhere. What is your name?"

"S-Sak…Manami?" It just came out. "Manami." she said more confidently.

"There you go," he said in a quiet, soothing voice. "When we get inside just let these things come to you. I'm sorry if I hurt you."

He gave her arm a small squeeze before turning back and moving swiftly up the incline, dropping to his stomach and inching his way forward to the brow of the hill.

Sai, Naruto, and Sakura followed suit, dropping to their bellies and shimmying up to where Kakashi now lay.

The treeline stopped abruptly just feet in front of them, leaving an open sandy arena that stretched out toward a steep rock face, its surface dark and ominous rearing up before them. At first, it was difficult to discern anything in the dark although the moonlight flooded into the flat plain ahead more than they felt comfortable with.

Once she had spotted the entrance, Sakura could have kicked herself for missing it. Thick supporting pillars jutted out of the slate with deep decorative grooves traveling down their length. A grand looking arch crossed over them engraved in figurative patterns, which were picked out harshly by the blue floodlight of the moon.

"This hardly looks very secret base-like, does it?" she muttered in Sai's ear.

"It probably operates under the guise of something else."

"Like what? How could Taki not realize when it's only just outside their walls?"

"I don't know, but I doubt they know its true purpose. They would never risk a war with Konoha," he replied, not once averting his eyes from the less than obscure doorway.

A purposeful shift in weight bought their attention straight back to Kakashi who signaled Sai and Naruto to stay put, gesturing to Sakura and himself with two fingers and then at the doorway. He brought himself into a crouching position, bracing his splayed hands on the ground in front of him.

Sakura mimicked this and, gathering tension into the balls of her feet, shot forward with Kakashi in unison, sprinting across the open ground at breakneck speed. She looked around left to right, left to right, searching the surrounding treeline for hostile movement. Her rucksack bumped uncomfortably against her spine and she reached behind, holding it flat to her body to avoid making the extra noise. She drew up alongside Kakashi and hugged the wall, hoping to dissolve into the rough, stony surface. Her blood pounded in her ears. She once again searched the treeline, waiting for an attack that never came.

Kakashi moved into the entranceway, kneeling down against the pillars, cocking his head to the large wooden double doors. He listened patiently, feeling out for chakra signatures and mentally registered what little information he could: A barrier tag bridged the gap in the doors and a thin slit of light streaked out from behind it.

After a long painful silence in which Sakura had started to feel horrifically exposed, he drew his hands up to perform four hand seals. He whispered "release" under his breath and the tag immediately crumpled, floating silently onto the ground before him. He tensed, seeming to expect something else to happen, but was just met with the persistent chirping of crickets from behind them. His brow knitted into a concerned frown as he applied pressure onto the thick door which opened smoothly inwards, allowing bright white light to shaft through the crack, stretching out across the open ground towards the trees where Naruto and Sai still lay waiting. Again, he tensed and again, he frowned. He looked to Sakura with a questioning expression that read _I don't like this, _but she could only shrug, as puzzled about the eerie silence as he was. He slipped his rucksack off one shoulder and swung it around, removing a simple calico bag with a long strap and passed it over to Sakura, motioning silently for her rucksack which he stuffed into his own. Another gesture for her weapons pouch and cloak was met with a defiant stare, but she complied anyway, stuffing them in his hands grudgingly.

_Skimpy outfit, strange place, no weapons. Fantastic._

She felt into the bag, pulling out several scrolls that were labelled with the official Konoha archives insignia.

No turning back now.

Placing them back in, she waved her hand over the crack in the door several times in quick succession, causing the strong streak of light across the ground to flicker.

Seconds later Naruto and Sai arrived next to her, their faces drawn and serious, peering into the brightness as Kakashi edged the door open further.

* * *

They stepped into the corridor beyond and shielded their eyes as they adjusted to the stark, white light. This was not what they had expected at all. Enemy bases were normally predictably uniform with dim lighting and grungy walls that smelled like soil. Countless missions had had them traipsing through grimy dungeons and jumping at flickering shadows and sinister noises, moving forward one foot at a time, looking out for tripwires and hidden switches.

This was completely different. The corridors were bright and white and clean...And silent.

There were no shadows to hide in and Kakashi resisted the urge to laugh at himself as he clung stealthily to the wall, moving forward with careful and deliberate steps.

If anyone had rounded the corner, there wasn't a chance in hell that they wouldn't see Naruto's gleaming orange and black jumpsuit.

Kakashi took comfort in the fact that for once in his life his hair made him the most inconspicuous out of the lot of them. Apart from Sakura, of course, who was someone else entirely.

They pressed forward, trying to limit the squeak of their shoes on the highly polished surface as much as possible, following passageway upon passageway, edging deeper and deeper into the unknown.

They passed a series of large rooms that had rows upon rows of simple bunk beds with grey metal frames and crisp white bedsheets. All were made neatly and uniformly. A thin film of dust covered the bedside lockers that were empty with no clue as to who the occupants had been or what they had been doing.

They surveyed the first three rooms carefully, looking for personal artifacts or some sort of clue, but after that they had moved on through, quickly feeling a little like they had stumbled into a ghost town.

The oppressive silence stretched on and they became more nervous to break it, communicating with nods and gestures as they explored further.

Sakura had startled them all when she had let out a long, hard breath that she had been holding for the last minute or so without noticing.

Naruto still shot her nervous glances, looking her up and down and frowning, once in a while giving her a disapproving headshake.

She felt strangely comforted by this, knowing that she was more appreciated looking like, well, _her!_

They passed kitchenettes and shower rooms all painted in the same clinical white: white fixtures, white fittings, white furniture with whiter ceilings and walls. The monotony of identical corridor after identical corridor led to a growing sense of disorientation. Finally, they came to a stairwell, one door leading off at a sharp right angle from the corridor they had been travelling down. A large set of stairs lead further down into the unknown.

Naruto mouthed a "good luck" in Sakura's direction before following Sai silently down the stairs, once again cautious as they made their wary decent into the unknown.

Kakashi pushed through the door ahead of them, leading Sakura into more of the same. His mind worked in overdrive as he recounted the twists and turns they had made to get to this point and hoped that Sai had been doing the same. If push came to shove, they wouldn't have time to be running around lost in this labyrinth.

It was several minutes later before the soft murmur of conversation reached their ears and Kakashi tugged Sakura into a small bathroom as he listened keenly to find the source of the noise.

Sakura started shaking again, adrenalin pumping through her body, and she searched frantically at her thigh for her weapons pouch, but only found fistfuls of the silky kimono fabric. She reached up to worry the canvas strap of the bag resting at her hip. Defenseless and aware of how quickly her task had arrived, she swallowed hard and repeated a reassuring mantra over in her head.

Soft music overrode the quiet drone of conversation and filled the restroom. Both of their gazes snapped up a ventilation grating running the length of the wall.

Moving silently over to the basins, Kakashi pulled himself up by his fingertips to look through the grating into the room beyond, his arm muscles quivering under the silent excursion as he steadily lowered himself back down. Walking back over to the door, he leaned in close to Sakura's ear and whispered, "We're in luck. You need to get a look at these girls: Look at their movements and how they're acting. Keep it in mind when you go in there."

He guided her back over to the basins and squatted down, interlacing his fingers into a basket.

She stepped into his palms and he hoisted her up, drawing her chin level with the grating.

The room was warm looking in contrast to the other areas of the complex. Although still painted white, it had a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, which bathed the room in a gentle glow. Two men sat at a table in the center of the room, mulling over paperwork. One man reclined lazily back in a chair, his hands folded behind his head, closing his eyes to the soft music.

Brightly colored cushions lined one corner and a young girl, who looked shockingly similar to herself at this time, sat plucking skilfully at a yamatogoto. Her hands moved up and down the fret, striking each string with graceful precision and muting others with her thumb. She sat with her eyes closed, swaying gently to and fro with the rhythm.

Another girl moved into view, carrying a tray of warm sake. She served it to the men silently, walking around them with a strong, confident roll of her hips.

The men stopped their conversation, taking time to look up and down her figure, obviously enraptured by her presence.

Sakura watched in interest as the more relaxed of the two men let his hand wander around under the girl's kimono, pushing hungrily up to caress a buttock. The girl didn't even flinch. She just stood there and smiled at him. A glimpse of a brown orchid flashed up at Sakura and she felt her mouth run dry. She tapped Kakashi's head lightly, signalling at him to lower her down.

Sakura paced the bathroom thoughtfully, adding a hip roll here and there, swaying her bottom as rhythmically as she could manage. She corrected her posture a couple of times in the mirror, stretching her neck up and pulling her face into an arrogant expression. She batted her eyelashes a few times.

Kakashi watched her in silence as she worked out the kinks in her performance.

She could do this. She'd practiced being sexy alone in her apartment, strutting around in her underwear when she had nothing better to do. When she was satisfied, she sauntered back over to him, keeping in character the whole way, sticking her chest out slightly for effect and pouting her lips.

"I won't be far," he whispered quietly, his lone eye slightly wider than normal before pushing her by the small of her back into the bright corridor once again.

Slipping past him, she stopped outside the next room where the conversation and music from inside abruptly halted.

"Who's there?" a low growl demanded.

Gathering her nerves, Sakura's hand reached out to turn the handle. She shook her shoulders and straightened her back, assuming a position of calm confidence and opened the door.

* * *

Naruto followed Sai down the stairs that had seemed to go on forever. When they had finally reached the bottom, they were both relieved to find themselves in relative darkness, the lower level of the complex hopefully abandoned. From this point, they felt secure enough to travel at significant speed.

The temperature at the lower level definitely felt colder and the corridors wider which would, if need be, give them much more room to maneuver.

The first adjoining rooms had been large arenas, circular rooms with seating stands lining the walls. Padded stages stood in their centers, the mats flecked with small brown stains, some with large dark burn marks.

Sai made quiet comments about how this was clearly a training area, but for what he didn't know.

These arenas led off into small medical labs. Jars and vials were stacked haphazardly on warped shelving, some containing recognizable ingredients such as deer antlers, some containing strange colored liquids and pale, coiled creatures that had petrified with age. The corridors down here smelled like iron.

The fifth room they came to looked like a library. Towering bookshelves full to the brim and overflowing with scrolls and loose parchments were arranged in rows with movable stepladders attached against the top shelves on cast iron rollers.

Sai motioned over to the far side of the room. "I'll check here, you start over there."

Naruto nodded and made his way over to the nearest shelf, scanning the jumble of papers for something relevant. In reality, he didn't really know what he was supposed to be looking for. He pulled out timetables, training manifestos, bills, and accounts. He felt his eyes glaze over in boredom. Reading had never really been his strong point.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," he muttered quietly. Three Shadow Clones materialized beside him with a sucking _poof._

"Find anything with the word 'Konoha' in it and put it in a pile here," the real Naruto said.

His clones nodded, separating out, taking a shelf each. They immediately started fumbling through the papers, pulling out scrolls and heavy books, laying them open on the floor and flicking through them. One clambered up a stepladder, reaching for the highest shelf and brought an avalanche of heavy documents tumbling down onto the floor with a loud clatter. They all sucked in their breath, waiting, but nothing happened other than Sai shooting them a dirty look. The Narutos shrugged an apology before turning back and rifling through the heap of paper on the floor.

Naruto picked up one green file and skimmed its contents briefly. More pie charts, graphs, something to do with funding, and God knows what else. Clutching it against his chest absentmindedly, he made his way over to where Sai was standing, staring up at the wall in front of him.

"Hey! You're supposed to be looking through this stuff, too!" Naruto whined.

Sai held up his hand to silence him, frowning deeply at the expanse of space in front of him.

"Stop looking into space like an idiot and get over here and help me!"

"Shut up, Naruto."

"This isn't the time to act like a bastard! Stop treating me like you're the leader! We have to find this…" his voice drifted into silence.

On the wall was a large aerial map of Konoha. Colored pins in green and red decorated its surface, clusters placed around several landmarks. The Hokage building, the civilian quarter, the hospital, and the Academy were heavily concentrated in red pins placed at uniform distances. Ripped pages from a bingo book were pinned along its border: Kakashi, Gai, Ibiki, Anko, Neji, and other jounin level ninjas were circled in bright red marker pen. Tsunade was in the top center with Shizune pinned next to her. Scrawled notes in messy handwriting were beside each name, some notes were more detailed than others.

"Oh, this doesn't look good." Naruto whispered.

"No, it doesn't." Came a dark reply as a jet of cold water hit Naruto square between the shoulder blades.


	8. Chapter 7: The black lake

_Thank you to all new readers, reviewers and lurkers alike, I hope you are enjoying this so far! Please let me know how it's going, even if its a four word review to say "it's Okay I guess!"_

_Thank you to my beautiful beta **ShipperTrish**, she's awesome, go read her stuff!_

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**Chapter 7:**_**The Black Lake.**_

Kakashi watched Sakura disappear into the room and waited for the door to close behind her. He took another glance at the grating in the bathroom, trying to decide what to do. He hesitantly put a gloved hand on the door handle, mulling over whether he should watch the proceedings through the grate or carry on searching the upper level.

_She would be fine. She was a big girl now. _

He needed to focus on gathering as much information as possible before they made their escape and if they didn't find what they needed…Well, this mission might just turn out a little bloodier than originally planned.

Tearing his eyes away, he stalked silently down the corridor past the room Sakura had entered and began exploring the other chambers. Thankfully, the doors slid open easily on well-oiled hinges and he slipped inside the rooms unseen and unheard. The chambers on this level were quite unremarkable and his thoughts traveled down to Sai and Naruto, hoping that they had found something more interesting. Persistent nags and worries surfaced to his mind. It had been quite some time since he had worked closely with anyone else, having taken to requesting solo missions over that last few months. He knew they were capable. Yes, they were more than capable.

How was Sakura doing? How long had he been away from her? Five minutes? Ten? He chastised himself for being so protective, but what if she couldn't do it? What if they saw through the technique and hurt her? Impossible. It was a strong technique, the strongest. She would easily be a match for them...If she had her chakra, which she didn't, he reminded himself. And the two girls in the room seemed furious, their chakra signatures strong and complex. No, she wasn't a little girl. She was nearly eighteen. He'd been an ANBU captain well before that, but still…

He was about to turn and make his way back to the bathroom to wait for Sakura when his eye caught sight of a small bronze plaque on one of the otherwise uniform wooden doors. He traced his fingers over the engraved orchid. His curiosity suddenly spiked and he pushed his way into the room. Pulling the door closed behind him, he flicked on the light.

The hall he had entered mirrored itself almost perfectly: Wooden pigeonholes faced each other from opposite sides. Further down, wooden slatted holsters were drilled into the wall. Clothes rails and lockers stretched down to the furthest end. Along the back wall were more pigeonholes. On one half of the room, the lockers, railings, and cabinets stood empty, gathering dust, but on the other side the pigeonholes were stuffed full of scrolls, containers of flammable liquid, coils of cutting wire, and kunai. Shurikens were piled high in boxes and wicked looking katana were held in the wooden holsters. Jars of smoke pellets and grenades were stuffed into larger cubbyholes. Barrels of gunpowder were stacked next to large bamboo canons. Leafy piles of exploding tags sat amongst wired charges. Remnants of combat uniforms hung discarded from metal hangers at the far end.

He fingered the fabric of a woolen cloak that hung alone on a bent railing and stooped down to pull out a large wooden tray. Battered wrist guards with leather trim lay strewn at the bottom. He reached in, pulling out a porcelain animal mask which had a crack running down its length. Its red cat markings were worn and faded. The design itself looked a little outdated.

A feeling of dread washed over him as he stared over to the emptier side of the room. How long ago had this been full? Was all this stuff coming from Konoha? There was enough ammunition here to wipe Konoha's presence from the face of the planet. The base had the capacity to hold a hundred or more soldiers from what he'd seen alone, but it was unusually empty.

_Pakkun only sensed a handful of people in the actual base, but reported a vaster number had been through here recently…_

Shit. They'd been raising an army, but where is it?

* * *

The cold water frothed and foamed around Naruto's ankles, trying to drag him off balance as he braced himself for the next torrent that slammed this time into his stomach. The pressure winded him, knocking him forward onto his knees. Sodden pieces of paper clung to his shoulders and he pulled himself up once again to face his attacker, a tall man with blunt, even features. Books and small scrolls bounced around on the surface of the now calf deep liquid as one by one Naruto's clones were thrown against the walls, their bodies bursting into thick, smoky clouds.

Gathering strength into his legs, Naruto leaped across the room and onto a solid, oak table. His eyes searched the room for Sai, but he couldn't distinguish anything human shaped in the turbulent eddies swirling around him. He leaped once again as another jet snaked at an alarming speed towards him. It surged straight into the overhead lighting, causing the hinges to snap under the force. The fiber optic tubes shattered and swung violently on long, thick wires and sent a fine rain of blue sparks showering down around them.

* * *

Nothing had prepared Toro for the shock he had received when stumbling upon the young man standing brazenly in the middle of the library, staring up at the attack plans, talking to himself. Initially, it had surprised him that the boy had got all the way down here without being caught, but then again, the base was largely deserted.

He could have sworn he'd heard another voice coming from inside the room, but when he'd entered he had only seen the one before him who stuck out like a sore thumb in a black and bright orange outfit. It had taken several seconds for him to notice the shadow clones milling about in the aisles, tearing out files and scrolls with no consideration to the order. It had taken him weeks to painstakingly order and catalog the wealth of information that had accumulated over the last six months, and with new files coming in all the time, he'd be damned if some little idiot was going to mess up all his hard work.

His first two attacks had landed with unrivalled precision and he could not contain his gleeful chuckle as the teen choked up water, clutching his stomach in agony. Now as the lights hummed and strobed around him, he raised his hands once again, about to send a wall of water at his victim's exposed body, certain that the force would crush him. He hesitated briefly, knowing that he should spare the boy's life so that he could be taken upstairs to Kawa to be tortured and questioned.

He revised the strength of his technique, angling his hands lower. The pressure built up in his palms, the surface of the pooling water on the floor starting to drag up into a wave, foam and bubbles forming a spewing crown along its edge. The lights flickered again, plunging the room into blackness for a split second only to jump back into life, revealing an empty space where his victim had been. He swore aloud in frustration as the technique dispersed and he began searching slowly and systematically the book filled aisles.

* * *

Naruto pulled himself up a cast iron stepladder and onto the top of one large, wooden bookshelf. Flattening himself as much as possible, he edged along the smooth surface on his stomach.

"Where are you, you little fucker?!"

Naruto could hear him sloshing through the water below, checking each aisle, slowly coming closer and closer to finding his hiding space.

"Come on out! I just want to chat!" The man shouted, followed by his manic laughter. His breathing came in ragged bursts as he walked just feet from where Naruto lay.

Naruto needed a plan and fast. His initial reaction had been to just get out of the water and away from the sparking electricity, but this room was cluttered and cramped. He was a power fighter, he needed space to manoeuvre. He wouldn't have time to use the Rasengan. His hands moved slowly to his thigh as he looped his index finger into the handle of a kunai, every nerve on edge as he prepared for the next attack. An abrupt crash from in front of him drew his attention and soon the enemy was dragging himself through the water towards the center of the room.

"I can hear you!" the man called, moving further and further away from Naruto's prone position.

Naruto allowed himself a small sigh of relief and wiped away the line of perspiration that clung to his top lip.

Small black flashes.

Movement on the lower shelves opposite Naruto grabbed his attention, snapping his gaze around to stare down at the darkened room around him. The fitful flickering of the broken lighting lit up the room at irregular intervals with a harsh, blue brightness, revealing a swarming mass of little black bodies that crept and scuttled along the shelving, following after the man.

When a fat, black rat pushed past Naruto's chin, he covered his mouth to hold back a grunt of repulsion as its hairy little body wriggled over the edge, landing with a quiet _splash_ into the flood, the water around it billowing into clouds of dark black.

"You can't hide forever, coward!"

Soon, countless rats were lining the edges of the shelving, their haunches quivering in excitement, the wiry hairs down their backs standing erect with anticipation. Long, yellowed incisors working rhythmically up and down, emitting small low-pitched clicks similar to the busy chattering of cicadas.

The faint sound had not gone unnoticed by the enemy either who was instantly more alert. He turned on the spot, slowly taking up a guarded offensive position.

Climbing over each other and down the wooden frames, the rats slipped into the water. Clouds of dark murky colour spread with them as they swarmed forward in a uniform triangular formation, only their blunt heads visible above the water, edging closer and closer to the unsuspecting man who was now shouting goading comments in the centre of the room, his eyes darting back and forth as he scanned the bookshelves. They were completely surrounding him, glinting eyes barely visible in the black lake of the room.

Naruto watched grimly, finally understanding what was about to happen. For a second, his and the ninja's eyes met, the ninja giving out a low grunt of triumph as he began to form hand seals, but his face fell from a satisfied smirk to dark confusion when his orange clad opponent did nothing to defend himself. He just lay atop the shelving, shaking his head sadly.

Knee deep in the water, the ninja hadn't noticed as the black film started to crawl up his legs, coiling slowly upwards to his waist. His face contorted into panic when he realized he couldn't move them. His arms thrashed violently until they, too, were restrained by thick, oily tendrils. He started to wail in terror as the ink oozing up around his neck and ears bubbled back into the form of screaming rodents, biting and clawing at his face. He tried in vain to force his mouth closed as the bristly black body of a rat pushed its way into his mouth, its haunches wriggling and straining with the effort. The rats' tiny claws scratched deeply as they fought for purchase, climbing over each other and forcing their way into his mouth, causing him to choke and splutter. His eyes bulged dangerously as the realization of his mistake gripped him. His chest heaved and jerked spasmodically as he tried to rid his lungs from the thick, black liquid.

The black water hissed and bubbled around him as first a head and then a torso began to rise slowly out of the water in front of him. The swathe of black retreated from the corners of the room as the ink was pulled up into its new form. The attacker's eyes widened as Sai emerged from the black mass, his hand reaching onto his shoulder to grip the worn handle of his katana. With one fluid motion, it was pulled from its sheath and plunged quickly up underneath the man's ribcage. There was a sickening _crack_ as Sai twisted the blade, forcing the sharp metal through the man's sternum, slicing neatly through organs and muscle tissue as it tore before exploding violently out of the man's chest cavity. A dark mixture of ink and blood dribbled down the dead man's chin and landed in heavy droplets on the surface of the water. His body slumped slowly down and disappeared beneath the water.

Sai's head turned in Naruto's direction, his pale, still face patterned with wet splatters of bright crimson.

"Running and hiding…You pussy."

A wide, fake, yet perfect smile beamed up at Naruto and a twinkle of satisfaction danced somewhere behind Sai's eyes.

Naruto shuddered.

"Sai – You bastard!!! It was my plan all along to distract him so you could take the advantage!" he exclaimed, clearly lying.

* * *

Sakura entered the room, striding purposefully over to the table in the centre, deliberately meeting the eyes of each of the two men in turn.

"Manami." said the more relaxed of the two men with an easy smile. He winked at her devilishly as she moved closer.

He was good looking she supposed and looked young, probably in his early twenties. He had a thick head of hair that was dishevelled and curled slightly around his ears, a thin line of stubble shadowed his chin, and his eyes were deep set and dark.

The other man opposite her looked stern and didn't meet her gaze with the same warmth. He nodded once in greeting before turning back to the papers littering the table in front of him.

She turned her attention back to the man beside her who calmly placed a hand on her hip, rubbing his thumb against her affectionately. She thought she'd feel revulsion and searing hatred at being manhandled the same way the other girls in the room had been, but instead, she just felt the soft flutter of arousal warming her lower abdomen. A name floated up into her conscious mind from somewhere below the surface.

"Kobushi," she said teasingly, "It's been a while." Her voice came forward throaty and wantonly as she pushed her hip further into the warm touch of his hand. Part of her was reeling, her fists tightened automatically in annoyance. Her better senses screamed at her to maintain a distance, but the other foreign part of her moved her forward, itching for the contact. She went with it, hoping the strange instincts would see her through this exchange.

"How did it go, precious? Did you get what we needed?" he cooed against her throat.

"Of course." she purred back as he nipped and sucked at her collarbone. Her focus was slipping and she could feel it.

"You're late. That information is useless to us now. They left over twenty-four hours ago." the other man growled. His stare was hard, lacking of affection and his voice was monotone, unwelcoming.

"Don't fucking start with me!" she snapped with courage she didn't feel. "I ran into trouble on the way back! I got here as soon as I could!"

Sakura had to say that the use of profanity was quite liberating and made a mental note to employ a little more swearing into her general conversation when she got back to Konoha. It seemed to shut people up. She unhooked the satchel from her shoulder and pulled out the heavy contents, chucking it on the table so that it slid across the surface. Files and papers fanned out towards the stern looking man who she seemed to "remember" was called Kawa. A subconscious shudder ran through her body. It seemed even Manami had a dislike for the man.

"So how many do we have left here?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

"Five." he said not looking up.

"Five?" She looked around the room, noting the two girls who sat in the corner, tuning their instruments on the satin pillows. That was four…

"That barbaric excuse for a librarian just went to retrieve a file for me. He should have been back by now though." mused Kobushi, stroking her bottom thoughtfully. "Maybe I should send someone down to get him. Arashi?" he gestured lazily at one of the girls who stood up immediately, moving gracefully towards the door.

_Damn it! Naruto and Sai were down there…_

"Wait!" Sakura said a little too quickly "…err, I've only just got back…and I...was hoping that the girls could play a little song to relax me." she smiled warmly, stroking a hand through Kobushi's hair.

"Play your own song, bitch." the girl called Arashi spat.

"No, no. Sounds like a good idea." Kobushi said with a slight smile.

With a low grunt, Arashi moved back across the room once again, picking up the wooden yamatogoto and began to play. Her eyes didn't leave Sakura, however, and Sakura felt a hot nervousness tighten around her neck under the dark scrutiny.

A shift by her side bought her attention back to Kobushi who had stood up and was moving away from her.

_I have to buy them more time…_

She caught his wrist a little too hard, but he didn't try to remove it. He just looked at her with an expression of amusement playing across his dark, handsome features.

"Manami, what are you doing?"

"Erm…S-stay." she bit out.

The music stopped abruptly and now all the focus in the room was on her. This was starting to go horribly wrong.

"What is wrong with you? I have to get that file." His tone had lowered, his brow creased in confusion, bordering on suspicion.

"Dance with me." It was quiet, unconfident, but they needed more time…

"You're acting strange…"

"I said dance with me!"

She surprised herself with the volume of her voice. It was a statement, not a request.

When his puzzled expression didn't soften, she felt she had no choice. Moving her feet slowly on the spot, she shuffled to and fro, adding a provocative sway to her hips once she had found a rhythm.

He stopped moving. Thankfully, she almost had his concentration. He lifted his hand, flicking it in Arashi's direction and with a roll of her eyes she started plucking at the instrument, building a melody for Sakura to follow.

His eyes ran up and down her body as she moved and she felt a bizarre rush of excitement spark through her under his intense gaze. She lifted her arms above her head, swaying along with the rhythm, dragging one hand purposefully down her neck, letting her slender fingers trace over the silky kimono fabric and over the soft curve of her breast.

One corner of his mouth quirked up into a lopsided smile, the desire evident in his eyes. He sunk back into the chair, crossing his arms in front of him.

Kawa looked up from his files and tapped the pencil against the desk impatiently.

"Some of us are trying to work here." he growled through clenched teeth.

"Oh, shut up, Kawa. Let the girls have their fun." Kobushi chuckled in good humour. "Hey, Haruka! Join in!"

The girl who had served the tea earlier stood slowly from her reclining position and moved silently over to Sakura. Soft, elegant hands reached around Sakura's waist and she felt herself stiffen in surprise. The hands began to move in long, lazy circles in time with the music, moving over Sakura's tight abdomen with feather-like touches. The pressure of hips against her buttocks and the placement of the girl's chin on her shoulder sent a wave of embarrassment into her cheeks. She could feel Haruka's breasts brush against her shoulder blades and the girl's hot breath against the back of her neck cause the tiny hairs below her hairline to prickle.

What the hell was going on? Did they make a habit of this in here? The proximity to this other girl and the overly familiar way she was being touched sent a wave of revulsion running through her, but at the same time if she closed her eyes and focused on the fact that it was someone else…someone _male_ touching her, it almost felt good. It was kind of reassuring when she was absolutely terrified. If she just pretended it was someone she trusted, someone safe, then she could get through this. She could imagine she was back in Konoha and this was at some party and she'd had had too much to drink and was dancing provocatively with some equally drunk boy who she'd known for ages. Yes, these hands weren't female, they were large and calloused and male…and those weren't breasts smashed into her back, they were the large padded pockets of a jounin vest…and it wasn't long, silky, feminine hair tickling her arm. It was gravity defying, scruffy, silver hair that belonged to…

_Where the hell did that come from?!_

One hand reached down, gripping her hip and the other snaked up her arm. The light scratch of fingernails against her skin caused Sakura to involuntarily shudder.

_Yup, definitely female…_After her previous thoughts, in a strange way that was suddenly more comforting.

Gripping both her wrists, the girl spun her around expertly so that they now stood face to face. An exposed bare thigh forced its way between Sakura's legs, causing her to bend her knees slightly to maintain balance. Their pelvises pushed together so that Sakura was almost seated atop the other girl who led them into a slow, sensual sway. Petite hands continued to roam around Sakura's body, one finding the small of her back to support her.

Sakura's breath was deepening as the music seemed to fade in and out of existence. She could feel herself getting carried away with the moment, a low heat simmering away at where the girl was making contact with the juncture between her legs. Whether the arousal was for her dancing companion or for the hungry gaze that bore into her back, she could not decide. Her body was betraying her. She needed to snap out of this. The unfolding events were leaps and bounds outside of Sakura's comfort zone, but the foreign tug of familiarity let her know that for Manami, at least, this was pretty normal.

_Who were these girls? How could they be so comfortable with behaving this way?_

Those thoughts were pushed brutally aside by the hot nipping at her exposed collarbone, the girl's tongue caressing her throat insistently, leaving fine, wet trails across her pale skin. Sakura unconsciously threw her head back, allowing the girl better access, a throaty moan escaping her lips. The soft chuckle behind her forced her to lazily open her eyes to look at Kobushi from upside-down.

"Kiss her." he said in a husky low growl, his large, rough hands rubbing up and down her thighs.

_Kiss her?! Kiss another woman?! _

For the sake of buying her teammates even the smallest amount of time she knew she would do it. As inexperienced as she was in areas beyond a quick grope and a couple of near misses in the drunken sex department, Sakura knew one thing: She was an excellent kisser.

_Okay. I can do this. All those kunoichi classes won't be for nothing._

So tilting her head back up, she fisted a hand into the hair of her companion and bought their mouths together with crushing force.

The first thing to be said about kissing another woman was the smell: Sweet, light, and delicate. With men it was all spices and pungent earthy tones, which Sakura loved…but this? Well, it was different. Then, there was the softness. The pink lips of her companion were springy and warm and strangely inviting. Probably the biggest difference lay in the lack of stubble. The silky smoothness of the girl's chin was, for lack of a better word, pleasant. When she felt her companion respond in full, her tongue ghosting across Sakura's own, it was, to be honest, quite refreshing. In her past experience of kissing boys, there always seemed to be an underlying battle of the sexes going on of who was in charge and who was the boss, but here it was so strangely equal, almost mechanical, but at the same time still arousing. And what was more exciting was the sense of empowerment that ran through her, knowing that the man behind her fucking loved it.

But then Kawa spoke up.

"That's enough." His voice was flat, unemotional and commanding.

His far more relaxed companion gave an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes at his spoilsport companion before addressing the girls in front of him.

"Ladies, as much as I would love to partake in this beautiful exchange, I really must get some work done." he said in a regretful tone.

The music stopped abruptly.

Sakura felt the body of the girl stiffen beneath her. Her eyes were now devoid of expression when they met Sakura's, maybe even a hint of hostility gleamed somewhere behind them. How was that possible? Switching from physical attraction to complete indifference, even dislike? It made Sakura uncomfortable and on edge. She detangled herself from the flesh and silk she was caught up in, moving away awkwardly and tucking a strand of long, dark hair behind her ear. She kicked herself at the display of her own body language, but it had seemed to go unnoticed.

"I-If there's nothing else you want with me, I'm going to go have a lie down. I'm tired after my mission." She exaggerated a yawn to add credibility to that statement.

"You know better than to ask permission." Kawa said, not looking up from his papers.

"I'll be coming to find you soon, so don't stray too far…" Kobushi said with a grin.

Smiling back in return, she moved to the door, looking back at the girl Haruka who now sat back on the satin pillows, looking uninterested and bored. Nodding once, she opened the door and stepped back into the corridor. Inwardly she swore. That had been relatively useless, but hopefully she had made enough time for her companions to find what they needed to. Now she just needed to find Kakashi and the boys and get the hell out of here.


	9. Chapter 8: Angel

_Update no jutsu! Enjoy! -Beta-ed by** ShipperTrish!**_

* * *

**Chapter 8:**_**Angel.**_

Dragging his feet heavily through the water, Naruto slowly made his way back over to where Sai was standing in front of the large aerial map of Konoha.

"So what are we going to do about that then?" Naruto asked in a low even tone, gesturing at the waterlogged map, the ink on the bingo book pages starting to run in pink blotches down the wall.

"We'll have to destroy it, obviously." Sai replied.

"How did they get hold of all this information?"

"I don't know. I'll write down what I can from the map. You need to look for more files. They'll have more on their plans for Konoha."

Sai took a scroll from his weapon's pouch and unravelled it along the length of one of the drier tables and set to work scribbling down in his neat calligraphic writing what information was still legible from the damp collaged wall.

Naruto grumbled unhappily to himself, once again summoning a small troop of clones who all grumbled in the same solemn tone. They set about righting the collapsed bookshelves and pulling files and folders from the cold murky liquid. Much of the contents of the binders were unsalvageable with the water and black ink having stained the pages, causing them to clump stodgily together so that many of the more promising articles had started to disintegrate into an ugly gray pulp.

Minutes passed by, but it seemed like hours to Naruto who couldn't remember the last time he'd read a book without pictures. Numbers, graphs, facts and figures...It was all just pointless jargon. Why couldn't he just find a nice, brightly coloured folder with the words "Evil Master Plan to Wipe Out Konoha" on the front? Yes, that would have been perfect, but no...

The Narutos scoured every corner of the library to find nothing but ambiguously labelled ring binders, obscurely ordered scrolls, and barely interesting textbooks.

Dispelling the clones in a small puff of smoke, Naruto sloshed back over to Sai who was still scribbling ferociously away on his scroll. Naruto stopped to pick up the small green folder that he had in his hands before they were attacked.

"Ahem!" Naruto coughed into his other hand loudly directly behind Sai.

When the stoic ANBU operative did nothing to acknowledge his presence, Naruto tried again, louder.

"A-He-Hem!"

"What is it, Naruto?"

"I can't find anything."

"Try again."

"Sai, there is nothing here but pointless facts and figures."

"Facts and figures are important. Look again."

A mischievous grin tugged at the corners of Naruto's mouth. Raising the green folder high above his head, he brought it sweeping down towards Sai's head only to have his pale skinned teammate whirl around and block it with his arm at the last moment, his expression blank, but his stance guarded. Naruto's grin dissolved into obvious disappointment, pinching his brows together and sticking out his bottom lip in a childish pout.

"I'm not your lackey. You can't just treat me like your personal secretary! I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for! Why don't you let me draw the pretty pictures in the corner while you get prune fingers trying to look through all these soggy books?…Why are you staring at me like that?! Oi, quit it!!!" Naruto seethed through clenched teeth.

Sai's eyes widened slightly in what his limited range of expressions could only be described as a mammoth display of shock, excitement, and complete amazement. He dropped the arm protecting his face from Naruto's outburst and his gaze focused on the small, white label wrapped across the spine of the green folder. The words "Financial Record 1: Armaments" gazed neatly up at him in familiar red marker.

"Naruto, you found something." Sai murmured in clear disbelief.

"Don't give me th…I…I did?"

Sai nodded thoughtfully, snatching the folder out of Naruto's grasp and began thumbing through the contents.

"Where did you find this?"

"It was over there when we came in."

"Can you find 'Financial Record 2' or anything with writing on the spine?"

""Err…okay…but where's Efseekon? I've never even heard of it."

"Fire Country, Konoha." Sai said, his voice flat and unamused.

"Ahhhh!" Naruto replied, turning back towards the sagging shelving as Sai immediately started scrawling down notes from the folder onto his scroll.

It was at that moment that the shrill scream of an alarm pierced through the relative silence of the library.

Jerking their heads up in shock, the two ninjas looked at each other in deep concern.

"Shit! They've found us!" Naruto shouted over the din. "We've got to go now!"

"It's not us they've found." Sai replied calmly. "We have to get those other files."

"What are you talking about, you idiot? If we get captured, this will all have been for nothing!"

"We won't get another chance to retrieve them if we leave now. This is our mission." Sai retorted, his expression stony and determined. Making a series of fast hand seals, the scribbled writing on his scroll bucked and contorted, slipping quickly into the familiar form of several large rats. Haunches quivering in excitement, they scampered off the page and slipped down back into the water, swimming swiftly to the doorway and disappearing from sight back the way they had come. "Kakashi will get the information no matter what. We'll meet back up with them outside when we've found the other files."

Any objections died on Naruto's tongue and he nodded once in grim understanding.

Sai was right. This opportunity could be invaluable to Konoha's safety.

Sai, as an ex-ANBU, was no stranger to doing anything and everything in the name of completing a mission successfully and Naruto, being Naruto, was hardly going to bound up the stairs and leave the artist to his own devices.

Rolling up his sleeves, Naruto once again plunged his hands back into the cold water.

Trying their best to ignore the whirring scream of the alarm, they continued wadding through the sodden contents of Naruto's previously discarded pile of paperwork.

Holding up another file in glee, this time titled "Financial Record 4," Naruto shot Sai his best victory grin.

It was then that they heard - no, _felt_ - the first deep rumble of an explosion.

* * *

Kakashi had been so preoccupied by the sheer amount of weaponry and other miscellaneous equipment, that he hadn't noticed the door open behind him. He would later run these events over and over in his head asking himself the same unanswerable questions:

Why didn't he sense something?

Why had he been so careless?

But then again, the threat had approached like a fog, a barely noticeable clouding of vision and before you know it, you're staring at impenetrable white, barely able to see your hand in front of your face.

When the girl watching him open-mouthed from the doorway finally unmasked her chakra, it had felt like he had been plunged into a bath of lava. The hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck shot up as the strange prickling feeling washed over his nervous system and automatically pulled him into a defensive pose even before he had properly registered that he wasn't alone.

Sheer power and fury emanated off her in thick waves that made him both excited and physically nauseous.

He slowly turned to face her, looping a kunai expertly out of his weapons pouch with his index finger and drawing the little steel weapon up in front of his chest as he readied for an attack.

The attack didn't come.

Smiling broadly, she entered into the room closing the door behind her.

He recognized her as one of the girls who he'd seen through the grating, the one who had been playing the instrument. She was just as beautiful as the others: long hair, pale skin, lithe elegant body.

As she steadily approached him, Kakashi fought the instinct to back away, but kept his wide fighting stance and stood his ground, the muscles in his body coiling almost painfully in anticipation.

"Hello, little lamb," she cooed in a sweet, light voice. "Are you a lost little lamb?"

"Yes, actually. I was attending a festival for the summer solstice and was just looking for the bathroom. You couldn't point me in the right direction, could you?" he replied smoothly.

The girl threw back her head and laughed in a shrill singsong voice as she played with her hair. "Oh, you're funny!"

"Thank you." Kakashi deadpanned as they began to slowly circle each other, neither closing the distance between the other nor expanding it. "And you are?"

"Arashi."

"Pleasure to meet you, Arashi. I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm-"

"Copy Nin Kakashi. I know who you are."

Kakashi's dark eye narrowed as the girl continued.

"You're quite famous, you know? I used to have your bingo book page up on my bedroom wall as a little girl. Well, it wasn't really a bedroom, more like a cell...I used to kiss your picture every night before I went to bed. I've always had a thing for mysterious men you see." She smiled again, batting her eyelashes for effect as she traced her fingers along the wooden shelving. "And now I have the chance to nail the real thing to my bedroom wall. You can imagine how excited that makes me," she purred, running one well manicured hand down her thigh provocatively as the other snatched up a kunai from one of the dusty pigeonholes.

Despite his obvious predicament, Kakashi couldn't help the smirk that pulled at the corners of his mouth from beneath his mask. This was an exact re-enactment of chapter twelve of _Icha Icha Violence_, except that he very much doubted that this would have the same outcome. No happy endings here…

Chuckling lightly he replied, "Nailed to an attractive girl's bedroom wall. That might well be the best offer I've had in a long time, but I'll have to decline."

"Shame." she stated, an almost wistful expression settling over her pretty, pouting features. "I guess we have to do this the hard way then."

Lunging forward, she brought the kunai sweeping up in a wide arc.

The blade hissed past Kakashi's ear as he stepped nimbly out of the way. Ducking low to avoid a sweeping kick, he brought his kunai up sharply, embedding it deeply into the girl's abdomen. The low sucking noise that followed indicated that he had hit a clone and he flipped back away from the replacement as it vanished into a cloud of dark gray smoke which seemed to be rapidly filling the room.

It was an impressive diversion, Kakashi thought to himself, falling back into a defensive pose. Visibility had been practically wiped out, but if he couldn't see, then she couldn't see. Stopping to listen carefully, he waited until the quiet sound of her breathing filtered through the haze. He couldn't hear her move it seemed. The girl was like a ghost, but she wasn't a ghost because she was definitely breathing, somewhere…

Whirling around, he sent a heavy punch into the area behind him and grinned in satisfaction as he felt his fist connect with flesh, followed by a heavy grunt as the wind was knocked forcibly out of his attacker.

Her body flew backwards, landing with a splintering crash as her body slammed into the shelving, sending vials of liquid and glass jars smashing all over the floor.

The smell of gasoline filled the air and soon the acrid liquid was pooling at his feet. This was starting to get messy and too noisy.

Taking the opportunity to gain the upper hand, Kakashi removed his hitai_-_ate, the now exposed Sharingan spinning as it adjusted to the light. He had to end this quickly before more of them arrived, before he or Sakura or Naruto and Sai were discovered. Had it been long enough? Did they have what they needed?

The sound of glass crunching underfoot refocused his attention. His eyes darted left and right, searching the dark and smoky room before picking up her chakra signature, which wasn't hard since his body was still trying to adjust to the aura she was giving off.

There! He could see her now. Diving forward without hesitation, he fisted her hair in his hand and pulled her viciously back towards him, slamming her face first onto the cold concrete floor. Pushing his knee into the small of her back to keep her steady, he pulled her head back sharply by her hair. He ignored her mewling and pleading and with lightning speed, his kunai sliced cleanly and effortlessly across her throat.

As the dark red liquid spread across the floor, mixing in an oily consistency with the gasoline, the dark smoke started to lift.

Sitting back on his ankles, Kakashi released a sigh of relief and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to work the sting out of his eyes. It seemed like using the Sharingan at all these days was causing him problems, the tension fanning out across his temples in a rhythmic hum. Then, he started to hear clapping followed by girlish giggling. Springing up to attention, he looked around in desperate confusion.

The now clear room was empty. There was no one but him and the body.

"You hurt me. You cut my pretty little neck…"

Staring down, Kakashi watched in horror as the girl's lips began to move up and down. Each word caused blood to gurgle and spray from her mouth and open throat, yet her voice remained unaffected. Closing his eyes, he bought his hands together in the appropriate seal.

"Kai!"

Opening his eyes again she was still there, smiling up at him with big doe eyes.

"You can't get rid of me like that."

"You're a genjutsu user." he stated blandly. "I have to say, you're really good. Even my Sharingan didn't pick it up."

"It would have if I hadn't been using this smoke as an extra component. The smoke is very real, perfect camouflage and laced with just enough of a hallucinogen based drug to make you readily accept what you are seeing. It was enough to trick your eyes. You don't think I'd be silly enough to use just genjutsu against the famous Copy Nin?"

"Very clever, and here I was thinking you were a bit slow."

Tightening his grasp on his kunai, he drove the blade down into his thigh. Pain exploded hot and fast like a sunburst through his leg. Grunting with excruciation and gritting his teeth hard against the pain, Kakashi pulled the kunai out and quickly pressed his palm down onto the heavily bleeding area.

The image of the body on the floor began to flicker and jump before disappearing completely and then suddenly he was being pushed to the floor, tackled roughly from behind, Arashi's sharp nails tearing into the back of his neck and shoulders as he struggled to knock her off. He could feel the back of his shirt and jacket getting wet as blood ran out of the open wounds she was gouging into his skin, the pain lancing up and down his body as he wrestled to get a hold of her.

Finally, he slammed backwards, knocking her once more against the wall. Her grip loosened enough for him to scramble out from under her. Backing away slowly, he once more took a defensive stance and swore bitterly as he felt the skin on the back of his neck concertina painfully. Forming hand seals at a brilliantly fast pace, the room was soon full of the sound of a thousand birds as Kakashi built the lightening blue Chidori on his open palm.

Arashi let terror flicker across her sunshine expression briefly and stood, moving slowly to the door.

Kakashi set into motion, moving across the length of the room in the blink of an eye. He couldn't let her get away, but then he saw her intention and by then it was too late.

She punched the large red button beside the door frame and immediately the sharp whirring of a siren ripped through the room.

Kakashi pushed the hot crackling Chidori out in front of him. This time he felt the contact, felt the electricity cut into her chest cavity.

In the time it took for the clinical overhead lighting to flicker off and be automatically replaced by orange floodlights, Arashi's eyes were already dead. Her face was blank and emotionless, only the remnants of a smile lending any character to her silence.

And then, Kakashi noticed many things at the same time:

The pool of gasoline spreading around his feet.

The upturned wooden barrels, cracked and broken from the fight.

Dark sand spilling across the concrete.

The low hissing noise emanating from the girl's clenched fist.

His eyes widened in disbelief as her death grip loosened and five sparking notes of paper drifted slowly to the floor, and suddenly he understood her smile.

* * *

Walking back towards the bathroom, the first bout of nausea hit her, a crippling cramp screwing tightly in her chest and abdomen. It knocked her almost off her feet. Bent double and trying desperately to hold back the loud cries that threatened to erupt from her, she staggered painfully back into the bathroom. Clutching the basin so hard that her knuckles turned white, she took long, ragged breaths to calm herself. The smoky reflection of Manami in the mirror looked back at her with the same agonized expression. When the next wave of pain shot through her body, she bit her lip so hard that a small trail of blood dribbled down her chin, splashing in a small red crown into the porcelain basin. Looking up into Manami's watering eyes, Sakura could swear they were slowly shifting from brilliant cobalt to a deep shade of marbled jade.

And then there was the siren followed by muffled shouts of outrage.

It was happening too fast and Sakura, her senses blistering with pain, stood shock still, staring at the door knowing that she needed to run, needed to get out of there as quickly as possible, but then there was the pain coursing through her system, her body trying to reclaim its rightful appearance and she found she couldn't move a muscle, as if her feet were joined to the linoleum.

The door swung open and Kawa stood barking orders at her, his voice barely carrying over the screeching alarm, motioning frantically at the now dark corridor, but she couldn't move.

He shouted loudly to be heard above the alarm. The phrase "We are under attack!" drifted past her ears, but still she remained rooted to the spot, dimly aware that she was in trouble.

Storming in, Kawa grabbed her roughly by the arm, his grip tight enough that Sakura knew it would leave bruises.

She tugged back instinctively, trying to distance herself from the enemy as yet another wave of pain jack hammered its way up her spine, causing her vision to swim and distort. She was briefly aware of his change of expression on his pinched face, from annoyance to disbelief and then anger and suddenly she was being lifted off her feet, her back slamming against the tiling on the wall as he held her by her throat.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" he screamed in her face, his grip tightening substantially around her neck, causing the lack of oxygen to make her vision swim further. He ran his free hand through her hair roughly, the dark glossy locks coming away easily in clumps, leaving Sakura's pink hair to hang limply around her face.

"I SAID WHO ARE YOU?!" he demanded, jarring her painfully against the wall again.

The knock spurred her into action, her limbs flailing suddenly and violently against his chest, her nails raking over his pale skin, but he stood there like a brick wall, strong and completely unmovable. Out of pure instinct for survival, Sakura drew her fist back, summoning chakra into her fingers and brought her fist sailing into his face, but there was no chakra, just the sickening crack of her fingers breaking against his face, but she didn't feel it. She was already in too much pain to notice. The adrenalin was kicking in, her heart was pounding in her ears.

But her punch had the desired effect.

Kawa dropped her to clutch at his bleeding nose, bellowing and swearing.

Sakura was off, scrambling across the linoleum floor towards the door, hoping that her teammates were safe, praying she could get out and regroup.

Then, the first massive explosion rocked the room, sending her stumbling to her knees. A sharp tug and tear told her Kawa had caught her again, but she barely had the time to register that fact. Her delicate silk kimono protested further as the floor sped backward and Kawa's fist knotted once again, but more securely into her hair.

The cold bite of a kunai sunk in against her throat and Sakura knew in that instant that everything had gone terribly wrong. She was going to die, her team was probably going to die.

Desperate frustration racked through her. She was not a weak little girl anymore. She was a talented ninja. She knew on a normal day she could probably beat this irritating bookish arsehole six feet under. She was the strongest person next to Tsunade. She knew! But of course today was not a normal day. She was stuck in a foreign body with a vast amount of useless chakra with a kunai held against her throat and in a minute her blood would be spread across the floor and seep into the cracks, leaving a permanent sticky stain that would take a lifetime to scrub clean. At least she could take satisfaction from that. She pictured her headstone:

Sakura the unmovable stain/Died in service to her country/She hit people/A lot

A strangled chuckle escaped her lips and she was surprised at how bitter it sounded. There was still so much to do, still so much she wanted to do.

The pressure on her scalp released and a terrified screaming filled her ears. It felt like it should've been her screaming, but she couldn't tell. She couldn't really tell much of anything right now.

When a bright, crackling light illuminated the room around her, she knew her life had ended. She let the warmth of it spread across her skin and let out a peaceful sigh. Warm secure arms embraced her, lifting her further away from the cold floor and she instinctively snuggled closer. This was followed by the exhilarating sensation of moving at a high speed.

"Sakura? Sakura! Can you hear me?" The voice was so low, rumbling as if all around her.

Somewhere in the distance, she was still aware of the keening. She smiled and nodded once against the warm, hard surface she was cradled against.

"Sakura? Do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?" the voice sounded desperate and a little out of breath.

"An angel." she murmured sleepily.

Did that sound like a scoff?

"Angel? Sakura, open your eyes!"

She didn't want to. She felt so warm and safe. Wouldn't they let you sleep forever in heaven? Slowly, she turned her face up and forced her eyes open.

No, not an angel. Kakashi.

She wasn't dead? With new found alertness, she looked wildly around. They were running down the dark corridors, which were only illuminated by the sweeping arches of orange emergency lighting. Kakashi's pace seemed barely hindered by the burden in his arms as he expertly retraced their steps, running as fast as his legs could possibly take him back towards the entrance, back towards safety. And then, Sakura was suddenly too aware. Her kimono was torn and gaping open, her body almost totally exposed in the lacy twin set. Thankfully, Kakashi didn't seem interested, his gaze locked ahead. If that was because he was trying to protect her modesty rather than get them both out of there alive, Sakura wasn't sure. She might have even congratulated him on being such a gentlemen, but really, this was Kakashi.

"Sakura, put your arms around my neck and hang on. I need both my hands."

She would have argued, but the tone in his voice was urgent. An order. It occurred to her through the confusion that they were in real trouble. Shifting her weight around, she obediently wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Then, the second explosion hit. The sound was deafening. She felt the corridor around them shift and buckle and looked over Kakashi's shoulder in surprise.

The door was just ahead of them.

Kakashi reached his arms forward, channelling chakra into his hands, ready to push the door out of their way, but all Sakura could see was the wall of tumbling black hurtling towards them, deep waves of rolling red bearing down on them.

All the oxygen seemed to have been sucked from the tiny corridor as the blistering heat hit her. Hiding her head back against Kakashi's chest, Sakura started screaming his name, and then the cold hit her back as the doors were flung open and with a large sucking pop, they were hurtled forward.

The sounds that followed were monstrous as if the earth was tearing itself apart.

When the dark tumbling curtain fell across her falling body, the world went black and still.

* * *


	10. Chapter 9: The snow that falls in summer

_Thank you to ShipperTrish for lending me her talents, she is a lovely Beta she is!_

* * *

**Chapter 9:**_**The Snow That Falls in Summer.**_

For what seemed like the longest time there was only blackness.

It wasn't the comforting warm blackness of a dreamless sleep, but instead, the muddy, weighty blackness of unconsciousness. It seemed to press in on all sides, uncomfortable and claustrophobic as if your skull was being held slightly too tight in a vice, the rest of your body adrift, detached, but again not in a particularly pleasant way. Instead, it felt anxious and lonely. At least this was how Sakura found it as awareness of herself filtered back into existence.

Slowly, somewhere on the periphery of her subconscious, shapes started weaving back and forth in the black. At first they were unsubstantial – faceless, nameless, and then slowly things began to fall back into place.

Firstly, her name "Sakura" resurfaced and once she had established that, she wasn't some random disembodied ball of energy and other things became easier to pin down. She was in danger. There were bad things out to get her. She needed to wake up. She needed help.

Then, following these basic instincts, her senses returned one by one. Smell was the first, the strong odor of both ozone and burning registered, fueling her with a further need to run, get away from the fire, it's dangerous. Then, secondly, taste. The irony and unmistakable taste of blood seemed to be everywhere: in her mouth, in her nose, and with that revelation everything else popped back at once. Most notably pain. Intense, horrific pain. Her whole body ached with a dull and rhythmic thump, which felt as though she had several hearts beating at once: one in her head, one in her hand, one in one of her legs, and then underneath, one where it was supposed to be in her actual chest. On top of that there was the hot burning sensation that seemed to run down the entire right side of her body like electric pins and needles. The sensation instantly made her queasy, so she continued to lay face down, unmoving with her eyes still closed. The medic in her chastised her, telling her that she had to get up and do her best to fix whatever damage had been done. She could be bleeding to death for God's sake! Although she knew she was right (especially as she could feel the warm, sticky wetness behind her ears which was itching like hell), Sakura really didn't care and honestly wanted to be left alone by the pain, by other people, and most certainly by herself.

Time seemed to pass in unknown quantities. She couldn't be sure whether it was hours or minutes since she regained consciousness and as she refused to open her eyes, she couldn't really tell. Eventually, the events of the last couple of hours caught up with her: the dangerous girl in the mirror, the dangerous men and women in the base, the pain (inwardly she despaired at just how _much_ pain she'd had to endure over the last forty eight hours and thought she should mention to the Hokage that perhaps holiday allowance shouldn't be based on missions completed, but on the pain endured on said missions), and then the fireball tearing towards her. Lastly, she remembered her friends. Where had Sai and Naruto been during that explosion? Was Kakashi injured? Where was everyone? Did they need help?

With that, her stubbornness evaporated and her eyes snapped open. Drawing her knees under her body, she prepared to stand, staring in shock at her limp and useless right hand. She tried to push up with her left instead. Immediately, the world tipped sideways and she landed with a dull thud on her shoulder.

_Okay…Come on, Sakura. Once more with feeling…_

The second attempt was more successful than the first and after what could have been a short decade, Sakura stood on wobbly legs, surveying the complete carnage around her. She stood on what could have only been described as a crater, almost perfectly circular and looked at least three hundred meters wide, its center littered with large boulders and broken columns. Plumes of thick, black smoke spilled from angry looking fissures in the crater's sides. Her mouth dropped open in complete shock at what she was seeing: the whole rock face that the base had been built into was just…gone! Other than the gaping wound in the earth, all that could be seen around her were the tall pine trees that encircled the clearing. Many of them were charred or burning with white hot flames that licked at the snow falling heavily around her. It had already started settling, covering everything with a clumpy icing.

_Snow…_

It was mid summer, hot and sticky without the raging inferno and so the elegant white of spiraling snowflakes seemed remarkably out of place.

Reaching her good hand out, she held it palm up, letting the delicate white flakes land. On her hot skin they didn't melt or feel cold at all and when she drew her thumb across them, a dark black smudge marred her pale skin.

_Ash…_

She moved forward without realizing it, running haphazardly down the sheer sides of the crater, clouds of dust and grit churning up around her as she half slid and half crawled down crater walls.

"NARUTO?!…SAI?!"

She shouted as loudly as she could, noticing that her voice sounded oddly muffled as if coming from another room. The ground was burning hot under her feet as she stumbled forward, the smoky air obscuring her vision as she got further towards the bottom.

"KAKASHI?!"

She tripped on something hard and metal jutting out of the ground and was sent hurtling forward, head over heels before landing heavily and coughing violently as the billowing dirt flooded up her nostrils and into her mouth. Feeling defeated and utterly hopeless, she pounded her already throbbing head against the hard ground in anger and frustration.

Then, she heard it, a soft groan.

"Hello? Naruto?…Kakashi?"

Another groan.

"Kakashi?"

Looking around wildly, she saw it. Several meters ahead of her, covered in debris and a thick layer of white ash was a shape, a human shape.

"Kakashi!"

She was on her feet quicker than she thought possible, the tattered silk of the kimono flapping behind her as she closed the distance between them. Kneeling beside him, she used the hem of her scant covering to wipe the soot and dirt off of his masked face. When he cracked open a bleary eye, which winced sharply in pain, she felt her heart flood with relief.

"If it wasn't for all the pain, I'd think I'd died and gone to _Icha, Icha Paradise_," he said with a whisper and an eye crinkle.

That was when Sakura noticed the state of her undress. The kimono had long since lost its ties and Sakura had apparently long since lost her bra. Looking down in surprise at her exposed bare chest that was decorated with cuts and grazes, she felt her face heat over.

"Faced with certain death and you still find time to be a pervert," she muttered, clutching the flimsy material over herself in a vain attempt to cover her modesty.

He merely chuckled in a wheezy kind of way.

"Can you feel your legs? Where does it hurt? How many fingers?" she bombarded, medic mode kicking in.

"Err…Yes, everywhere and you're using one hand to cover yourself and the other looks broken, so no fingers," he said with concern, looking at the state of his student.

"Good," she smiled, moving behind him and using her good hand to help push him up.

He grunted quietly as she placed her hand against his back, which oddly felt a little wet and warm.

"Did that hurt?" she asked, catching her bottom lip between her teeth and worrying it gently. "What happened? Let me see…"

"Sakura, I'm fine," he said, placating her with a reassuring wave of his hand. "Just a little burnt and battered. We need to regroup and find the others."

He saw the concern pinch her brow at the mention of their teammates as he reached stiffly into his pouch to retrieve his summoning scroll. A drop of blood and a ball of smoke later, his eight ninken were milling around them, sniffing and whining.

Pakkun walked to the front to eye his master with quiet concern.

"Kakashi, what the hell happened here?" he grumbled, looking around in bewilderment. "Are you alright? You're badly-" he started in his gravely, gruff voice.

"We're fine, Pakkun. Naruto and Sai are still missing. We need you to find them." Kakashi cut in.

Pakkun's brow furrowed further if that was possible and turned to address the rest of his clan.

"You heard the man!" And with that the eight dogs bounded off into the smoke, communicating with yelps and nips.

Pakkun returned first, wordlessly dragging a black satchel that was approximately the same size as him. He dropped it unceremoniously by Kakashi's side and shot him a meaningful look before heading back to join the search.

Sakura noticed Kakashi's one-eyed eye roll as he began to leaf through its contents.

"Is that our bag?"

"Yep." he replied shortly, chucking a rudimentary first aid kit at Sakura. "How's your chakra control?"

Looking sadly at her hands, Sakura replied, "Non existent. When do you think it will come back?"

"Hard to say. Probably in a few hours, maybe more. Patch yourself up as best you can until then."

"There's hardly anything in here, just some gauze, some wipes, a small bottle of iodine, a couple of bandages…What about you?"

"It's all yours, Sakura. You need it more than I do," he replied, gesturing to the numerous deep, bloody gouges littering her exposed flesh.

Using one of the water bottles that Kakashi had chucked her way to rinse the blood off her hair, she set to work one handed, applying cotton padding and bandages to the back of her head. Head wounds always bled like a bitch. It had stopped hurting. She set about disinfecting the larger gashes she could gain access to after that, marveling at the pleasant numbness of her body as she dabbed the usually excruciating orange liquid into the cuts.

"You know, I think I must be going into shock," she said mildly. "I can't feel anything now."

Kakashi looked her up and down before pulling out his spare long-sleeved jounin shirt from the satchel. He awkwardly shifted over to help her maneuver into it, gently lifting her arms through the sleeves.

"There, that'll stop you getting cold," he muttered.

"Thanks. Are you sure you don't want me to take a look at you?"

"Nah, I'm fine," he smiled, but with obvious tightness before swiping what remained of the water and knocking back two small black pellets.

"Soldier pills won't fix whatever's wrong."

"No, but they'll kill the pain and keep me awake."

She was about to protest, about to rattle off a long list of medical facts and rules pertaining to the proper use of battle stimulants, but then Pakkun made a reappearance, his head hung low and his stubby tail held close against his body.

"We can't find them, Kakashi. The smoke and fire are stopping us from getting a good scent. We can't sense their chakra anywhere. I'm sorry."

"Look again!" Sakura practically screamed, wide-eyed and panic-stricken. "They have to be here somewhere! They might be injured! They might need our help!"

The pug shifted awkwardly, shifting his eyes from Sakura to Kakashi anxiously.

"Both exits have caved in under the force of the explosion. I really don't see how they could've survived. They're most probably buried under a hundred feet of concrete and rubble. We can't sense any chakra, not theirs, not the enemy's. I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do."

"Thank you, Pakkun." Kakashi stated solemnly, lifting a hand to stop the tirade he could feel bubbling forth from Sakura. "We'll have to get out of here. The explosion will have attracted attention from Takigakure and the neighboring settlements. It won't do us any good at all to be found here."

"What are you talking about?!" Sakura admonished, the disbelief written clearly across her drawn features. "We can't just leave them here! I won't! The first lesson you ever taught us was that those who abandon their friends are worse than scum!"

"Sakura..."

"No, you listen! My team is my family! They aren't expendable and-"

"Sakura! This is not a discussion, it's an order! We have to-"

"NO!" And suddenly she was up and sprinting away from them, hot tears pricking at the corners of her eyes as she raced towards the center of the crater, not caring when sharp stones dug into her feet or when they were scalded by the red hot embers. She slammed her body into a giant pile of boulders and rubble, dragging at them with both hands, not feeling any pain as her already broken hand bent in inconceivable ways or as the flesh across her knuckles tore. She moved stones almost half her size, not with chakra, but with pure willpower.

_They had to be safe, they just had to be. _

...but the boulders got bigger until even willpower couldn't shift them.

Screaming her frustration against the obelisk-like pieces of stone, she started to cry. A warm hand slid over her shoulder.

"Sakura."

"NO!" she wailed again, beating her fists against the unyielding surface. If only she had her chakra, if only she could have been sent deep underground and not them. If only…

"Sakura, please…"

"no." her voice was small as his arms wrapped around her, turning her into his chest.

"We'll send a search party, the best Konoha has, I promise, but we need medical attention and we need to get out of here."

Her tears were coming heavily now, carving clean lines on her soot covered face. She looked up and the weight of her loss looked back at Kakashi from the glassy surface of her eyes. Then, in a final bout of defiance, she went limp in his arms.

Kakashi looked down at the girl's face. Even in unconsciousness it was pinched with worry and anger. He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

They really needed to get moving. If they didn't, he knew his own depression would soon overcome him, rendering them both helpless. They couldn't do anything for their lost teammates in their current condition anyway. Kakashi didn't even know if he would even be able to walk.

Pulling Sakura into a bridal style lift with the satchel bumping painfully against his burnt back, he prepared to move off, probably west toward Kusagakure. If they could get over the border to Grass or at least near the border, then they could wait until suspicion had died down before traveling back to Konoha. He'd send a dog ahead to Tsunade with the important details of the mission so that they could prepare for the coming war. He'd find a small village, hopefully with a doctor, and a cheap hotel.

A small, strangled squeak sounded from somewhere near his feet. He looked down in time to see a large, bristly black rat pull itself out of the cracks between the debris. It trailed a path of black ink from its hindquarters as it dragged its rapidly disintegrating body towards Kakashi.

Quickly, Kakashi placed the unconscious kunoichi on the ground as gently as possible and pulled out a parchment scroll from his flack jacket. Unfurling it fully, he laid it down in front of the dying animal. As its front paws touched the surface of the parchment its inky body exploded, splattering the paper with broken words and unfinished sentences.

Kakashi tried to make out anything that could be useful. What had Sai been trying to tell them?

"Bingo book," "profiles," "funding" – These words were legible, their letters smudged, but legible, and one other thing...A name.

Nakamizu Hiroto.

Well done, Sai. It was a start.

* * *

Sawasaki. It was a small border village between Waterfall and Grass which held around seventy residents. The problem with border settlements was that they were a bit of a no man's land. The people that lived there kept their heads low, taking what money they could make from the many mercenaries, outlaws, and downright weirdies that passed through. The people that didn't live here were said mercenaries, outlaws, and downright weirdies. In towns like this, prostitution and crime were rife, the motels were skanky fleabags, but due to increased trade, the food was generally pretty good and everything was cheap, so when Kakashi strode through the gates looking like he'd been set on fire then gone a few rounds, nobody even blinked. When he heaved Sakura off his shoulder onto the reception desk of the "Duck and Dive" (_How apt_, he thought) and proceeded to count out coin by coin the exact change needed to secure them a twin room, the receptionist, a hard looking woman with crooked teeth and broad shoulders, merely handed him his key and a tissue, berating him for dripping blood all over her desk. Picking up his not-so-light load and chucking her into a fireman's carry, Kakashi staggered slowly up the wooden stairs, slapping Sakura's backside half heartedly as he did so.

"I swear to God, after twenty six miles, I'm not sure if I disagree with Naruto about the weight thing," he muttered, suddenly feeling the loss of the orange clad ninja acutely.

Although, to be honest, Sakura's heaviness probably had more to do with his loss of blood, fractured ribs and hip, and the pain from his burnt back which the solider pills hadn't quite masked, than her actual weight. Really, she was quite a tiny thing.

Every time Kakashi moved, his jacket would feel like it was tearing a hole in his back. He'd tried removing it a few hours ago when the heat from the morning sun and the extra weight he was carrying started to make him feel sick and dizzy, but this had proven impossible. The fire had fused the jacket and undershirt to his body. His jaw felt swollen, too.

He fumbled with the key that didn't seem to want to turn until finally it granted them access. Limping forward to the one large bed in the center of the room, certain he'd asked for a twin, not a double, he placed Sakura gently on one side before climbing onto his own. He didn't even bother to take off his shoes and subsequently trailed mud up the side of the duvet. He really needed to go and find them a doctor or at least someone who knew more about first aid than him, but he was just _so_ tired. That was when Kakashi's own special brand of oblivion washed over him and dragged him under.


	11. Chapter 10: Too many mirrors

_Thank you again to **ShipperTrish**, the legend, the saviour, for betaing again, and thank you to all those who have been kind enough to review or fav!_

**Chapter 10:**_** Too Many Mirrors… **_

When Sakura finally woke up from what felt like the longest, deepest sleep of her life, it was to a strange mix of pleasure and pain. Pain - her body still hurt like hell, her brain seemed to beat like a tin drum against her skull, and the unpleasant tight numbness of her hand made it feel like she'd tied a breeze block around her wrist. The pleasure, however, lay in the fact that she could feel the warm thrum of her chakra coursing around her highway, wrapping her internally in a network of soothing green that diligently worked to heal the bruises and cuts that crisscrossed around her body. She'd got _that _idea from Naruto. When it became common knowledge that the Kyuubi's chakra regenerated Naruto's body at an alarming rate, Sakura had, in fascination, started working on her first original jutsu.

Being the only medic in her team, her first priority was the health of her teammates. If she was injured, her chakra control was weakened. If her chakra control was weakened, then it took longer to stabilize her teammates, and taking longer to do that could easily lead to complications, especially in enemy territory. So with the help of Tsunade and a rather large pile of medical theory, Sakura had set about learning how to store emergency chakra, formed already into warm, green medical chakra that would set about making essential repairs to her own body so she could simultaneously create new chakra for her patients. Unfortunately, she had only progressed far enough to be able to heal minor cuts and abrasions on herself, but even that could make a difference. At least she wouldn't be left with any superficial scarring. She supposed it wasn't even a jutsu, just something she had trained her body to do as naturally as breathing: collect, convert, store. It was simple, but genius. Despite this self professed genius, she had also always been cripplingly awful at naming things. Her first pet cat was called "Pretty Kitty" or "PK" for short. Her goldfish had been dubbed "Goldie." Yes, she was always an imaginative one…and the technique? "Medical Saving Thingy no Jutsu" much to Tsunade's despair.

Another source of pleasure came from the fact she was lying on possibly the most comfortable bed in existence. It was almost like floating, she thought absentmindedly. Of course, that realization brought up a ton of questions that Sakura found herself not wanting to know the answers to. The last time she had checked, she was losing it in a spectacular fashion, standing in a crater bleeding to death and screaming hysterically over her lost teammates. Just the recollection brought a surge of panic into her chest.

What had happened? Where was she? How exactly did she get here?

Cracking open an eye, she found herself staring up at a very pale and beat up looking young girl, one who, in that moment, looked barely out of the academy, small and frightened. Dirt was plastered over every inch of exposed flesh and her hair looked almost light brunette under the layers of soil and soot. Her eyes were sunken and hollow looking. Her face was drawn with worry. When Sakura reached up towards the ceiling, the girl reached down and she couldn't stop the incredulous bark of laughter that shook the bed with a gentle slosh and then she laughed again, painfully pulling herself into a sitting position.

A water bed and a mirrored ceiling. This had to be hell.

Looking around herself for the first time, she took in the hideous leopard print bedspread, the large glass bowl overflowing with condoms on the bedside table, the fluffy pink pillows which had been dumped on the shag pile carpet, the…_was that oils? Ew!_

Gingerly, she opened the little wooden drawer in the bedside table already knowing what she would find. Yep, _Kama Sutra_, the sex bible. And to make it even more cliché and disturbing, the room key lay next to her on the bed, its keyring a felted heart with the number 69 embroidered with sparkling diamante beads.

Rolling her eyes and feeling the need to hit the man responsible for choosing the most inappropriate motel on the continent (A "Love Motel" for Kami's sake!), she scanned the room for the silver haired pervert.

"Kakashi? What the hell is this?" her voice sounded hoarse and broken.

Silence.

"Kakashi?!"

_He must be out surveying the area_, she thought._ Wherever the hell we are_…

She turned her attention to the hand that still hung uselessly at her side and the dull bass beat of her head instead.

Focusing her chakra with the well seasoned experience of a medic-nin, she set about probing her body, sending out tendrils of the healing energy to assess the damage. Remarkably, but also as expected, her hand and head seemed to be the worst of her problems. Sure, there was a fractured rib and some muscle damage from several of the aggressive lacerations, but these would be easy to fix afterward. Her legs and thighs were bruised with an almost uniform pattern of ovals, which if she spread her hands wide, matched the marks left by fingertips.

She started with her biggest priority – her broken hand. A ninja was nothing without the use of their hands, a medic-nin more so.

The human hand has twenty seven bones, fourteen of those found in the fingers. Sakura was slightly dismayed to find she had managed to break, fracture, and crush nine of her phalanges, three of her metacarpals, and five of the carpal bones leading to a rather impressive total of seventeen out of twenty seven.

With a deep ragged breath, she quickly stuffed one of the offensively fluffy pillows in her mouth and bit down hard as she painstakingly re-broke each of the bones which had started fusing back at awkward angles. The relief was almost instant as the blood poured back into her fingers, releasing the tight numbness that had set into her joints from lack of oxygenated blood.

Once that was done, she summoned healing chakra and began pushing its energy into her sensitized hand. She let out a contented sigh as the soft green glow soothed the pain and began knitting the fractures and breaks back together, ironing out her collapsed tendons and relaxing knotted muscle.

After ten minutes of repeating this process, she gave her fingers an experimental stretch and flex, wriggling them one by one in front of her face and firing up visible chakra to make sure everything was running smoothly. They were still a little stiff and sore, but thankfully, fully operational. The cuts and grazes to her knuckles were now just pale red marks against her skin.

Placing both hands behind her head, she started a similar process with her skull, quickly closing the hairline fracture that ran from the nape of her neck to her crown and sending more healing energy to try and take down any swelling on her brain.

The hair at the back of her head was matted with clotted blood, hard and sticky to the touch. She looked up at her grubby appearance in the mirror above her and decided there and then that everything else could wait till after a nice, hot shower.

Gingerly stepping off the bed, she walked towards the door that she guessed belonged to the bathroom suite, marveling at how the shag pile fibers rubbed between her toes like furry blades of grass. It was so beyond tacky that she couldn't help but love it a little bit. She already had a complete image of what the bathroom would look like in her head, probably a hideous pink heart-shaped hot tub surrounded by nasty sparkly mosaic tiling and again _far_ too many mirrors.

As she pushed open the door, she would have been pleased to see that her suspicions had been almost spot on if it weren't for the fully dressed man lying neck deep in dark bloody water, paler than she had ever seen him.

* * *

Trembling violently, but silently in the water, his exposed eye white where his pupils had rolled back up into his head, Kakashi didn't even notice Sakura's entrance. In fact, he was completely unaware of pretty much everything apart from the heat.

He was burning. What had initially felt like the blazing surface of an iron against his back had since spread to a needling fever all over his body. He remembered staggering to the bathroom and lowering himself into ice cold water. It had seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time, but there had been no relief to the pain or heat. Instead, there was just a cloudy numbing of his extremities.

He had no concept of time. It felt like forever and felt like a minute all at once and so when small, but fiercely strong arms wrapped under his knees and back, he felt a primal sense of relief flood his system. He was not alone. Someone was here. He was not going to die alone.

It was something not many shinobi of his caliber ever got to experience. He had long ago accepted that he would probably die in a remote corner of the world far away from home, his body left to rot in a ditch or carved up by someone savvy enough to know the priceless nature of his eye.

As he was lowered onto a soft surface, he suddenly knew that whatever the outcome, he was in good hands.

* * *

Kakashi's incoherent ramblings continued as Sakura set to work checking his vitals, her forehead contorted with worry.

He was in shock, that much was certain, and then there was the onset of hypothermia judging by his violent shaking and confusion.

Removing his headband gently, she checked first the Sharingan. It spun and flared angrily as names and jumbled words tumbled from Kakashi's masked lips.

"Obito…not alone, stuck inside…" he croaked with agitation.

"Shhh…It's okay, Kakashi. It's me, Sakura. Shhh…" she cooed gently, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

His other pupil was fully dilated against the thin outline of his gray iris.

Once again she summoned her chakra, pushing the green glow into his body, tracing the injuries in her mind, mentally listing them in order of severity. He had several fractures, some were peppered across his ribs. One on his hipbone had become inflamed through walking. His breathing was erratic and shallow from slight smoke inhalation and exhaustion, but what caused her most concern was the nerve damage across his back and shoulders and the signs of infection.

Gently turning him onto his front, she studied his back. The jounin issue jacket was charred a deep and bloody black. The stench of burnt tissue made Sakura want to heave. Experimentally, she pulled gently at the once green fabric, noting dismally how portions of skin seemed fused into the thin weave of the fibers.

Kakashi gave an indignant groan at her actions.

"Only you would try and remedy third degree burns by giving yourself hypothermia," she muttered grimly before coughing and raising her voice loudly. "Kakashi, I'm going to have to take your clothes off and then I'm going to have cut this jacket off you, which will probably hurt _a lot,_ so I'm going to have to knock you out. We don't have any medical supplies left, so I'll have to do it the old fashioned way. Do you understand?" she said this clearly and slowly and without a trace of embarrassment, the professional medic in her overriding her nervousness at the idea of stripping her ex-sensei down to his unmentionables.

"…eyes eat energy. No bloodlines, but the best," he responded with a foggy slur, sounding almost pleased with himself.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." she said as she placed two fingers against his temple and let out a burst of chakra that rendered him silent and motionless at once.

As soon as he was still, Sakura stood up and started wrestling as gently as possible with her sensei's shoes and trousers. She pulled the sodden and muddied sandals off quickly and gently and eased the jounin pants, along with some absurdly patterned shuriken boxers, over his hips and draped them over the tiny heater by the window to dry. To avoid indulging her wandering eyes, she quickly pulled the duvet over his exposed rear.

Grabbing Kakashi's abandoned kunai pouch in one hand and the large glass bowl of condoms in the other, she strode with quick hurried steps towards the bathroom. She threw the contents of the bowl on the floor, which scattered like plastic wrapped confetti in her wake. Once in the bathroom, she washed her hands thoroughly under the tap that was turned up as hot as she could stand and began soaping them and the sharpest kunai she could find into a thick lather with the motel's complimentary shower gel, which of course smelled like a mint flavored brothel. Once that was done, she rinsed her hands and her makeshift surgical instrument and filled the bowl with warm water and went back into the room. Placing the bowl back on the bedside table and the kunai in the bowl, she wandered over to Kakashi's prone form and knelt on the bed next to his hips.

She took a deep steadying breath as she started what was sure to be the long and tiring process of removing her sensei from his uniform.

The last remnants of sunlight had long since disappeared by the time Sakura eased the last piece of fabric out of her teacher's back. Standing up, the kunoichi cracked her neck, which had been protesting at her awkward, hunched position for the better part of two hours. She took the now claret colored bowl of water and deposited its bloody contents into the sink, again stopping to wash her hands. Finally, she could begin what she was best at: chakra enhanced healing.

The skin on Kakashi's back slowly reformed as one hand worked across its surface fluidly and gracefully while the other worked on monitoring his vitals, slowly raising his body's temperature, pushing out infection, and correcting his blood pressure.

It was an agonizingly slow process, but soon she felt his breathing level out and his heart regain a regular beat that got stronger by the minute. She was starting to feel the unpleasant tug of chakra over-excursion, her eyelids feeling heavy and her breath coming in shorter pants. Once the skin on his back had finally knitted together, she moved both hands awkwardly under the duvet and began fixing the irritated fracture on his hipbone.

That would have to do. Kakashi wasn't anything if not as tough as old boots. He certainly wouldn't complain about the lighter burns that remained untouched or a few cracked ribs.

She studied his sleeping form, too tired to expend any more chakra waking him up. He'd have to get there on his own.

His back still looked red raw and would probably be tight and uncomfortable for a few days, but at least there would be no horrific scarring.

Sakura finally stumbled towards her much needed bath, dragging their pack behind her. Yes, soap and clean clothes. Bliss.

* * *

Kakashi watched Sakura emerge from the bathroom feeling more than a little disconcerted. He leveled her with what he knew to be his laziest, most noncommittal stare and spoke with his usual carefully schooled indifference, yet underneath this mask, and the _other_ mask, he was completely flummoxed and possibly a little embarrassed.

"Sakura, where are my clothes?" he gestured up and down at his bare chest and the duvet, which was held in a death grip across his waist. He couldn't miss the way her eyes trailed across his torso before settling on the bunched duvet.

"Oh…erm, sorry about that!" she squeaked, throwing the black rucksack onto the bed and scurrying hurriedly back into the safe confines of the bathroom. "I wont look!" she called, her face flushed as she slammed the door behind her.

The corners of Kakashi's mouth quirked up in amusement as he dug through the bag and retrieved his spare uniform, dismayed that he hadn't packed a spare jounin vest and that the only clean shirt he had was the one he used as pyjamas on missions. It was a little on the small side. He slipped into the uniform quickly, if a little stiffly, and grunted something to let Sakura know she could re-enter. When she finally cracked open the door to make sure the coast was clear of alluring male body parts, Kakashi had already finished two Konoha ration bars and was dusting his mask and shirt down for crumbs. He gestured the other two that sat in shiny green wrappers on one side of the bed.

"For once I am not going to complain about dehydrated fruits, nuts, and bran." Sakura said, greedily snatching up the tasteless offerings. It literally felt like she hadn't eaten in days.

"So…Kakashi. A love motel?" she said with a quirked eyebrow.

"Really?" Kakashi said in a curious tone, taking an exaggerated look at their surroundings. "I hadn't really noticed."

Sakura scoffed disbelievingly as she took a large bite of her high energy snack.

"Sakura, I was a little passed out when I was making accommodations. Besides, the place is called the 'Duck and Dive.' It doesn't exactly sound like a sex den."

Sakura only rolled her eyes at that and shot him another disbelieving look as she unwrapped the second protein bar.

"Whaf fime iss et?" she managed to work around a mouthful of crumbs.

"A little after ten."

Her eyes flickered down to her lap. "Are you feeling well enough to travel? Only I've used up a lot of chakra. I don't think I'll be much use on the way back."

"I'm fine. Good as new, really." he said gently. "But maybe we should rest up tonight and travel back in the morning. We still have some loose ends to tie up here first. I might have a lead."

"A lead?" Sakura asked quizzically.

"One of Sai's ink summons managed to get out. I want to follow up on what he tried to tell us."

"One of Sai's summons made it out?" she looked up at him hopefully. "What did it say? Does that mean there's a chance that they're…" she trailed off dejectedly, tears traitorously pricking at the corners of her eyes.

What could Kakashi say to that? Instead, he plastered what he hoped was a reassuring expression on the visible quarter of his face and put a large hand on her shoulder.

"I hope so, Sakura. I'll send word to Tsunade right away and she'll send the best trackers we have to bring them home." _Whatever condition they're in…_he added silently.

The way her face transformed made his chest hurt. One minute she looked as if she was sitting under the darkest cloud and the next she was beaming a wide toothy smile at him as if he had just given her the best present she had ever received.

Without thinking, Sakura flung herself at him, her arms wrapping securely around his neck and embracing him as tightly as she could.

"Thank you." she murmured into his shoulder, pressing her face tightly into the crook of his neck.

"Your welcome." Kakashi grumbled back awkwardly, rubbing soothing circles across her back.

He felt safe and warm and comforting. The way his hands traced lazy circles across her back sent delicious tremors through her body as she subconsciously pushed her face and chest further into him, absorbing his warmth and inhaling the smell of him through his clothes. He smelled of the woods and spices, along with the residual odor of blood and smoke. He smelled a little like he needed a proper wash. Altogether he just smelled so masculine, _so Kakashi_.

Her hands threaded into the hair at the nape of his neck and she closed her eyes, rubbing her check and temple slowly against his jaw. She exhaled heavily, brushing her lips against the soft fabric of his shirt and then there it was…the overwhelming need to turn her head and kiss him. Her heart sped up all at once with the realization that he was the only person that would ever make all this worry and pain go away. He was reliable. He was the only person she had left. Slowly, she pulled herself away until she knew her mouth must be only millimeters from his. She opened her eyes to stare at the dark fabric of his mask and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth dazedly and looked up at him through her lashes. Then, she felt rather than saw him snap rigid.

His eye remained calm and unreadable as his hands took her carefully, but firmly by the shoulders and pushed her back gently away from him. He was up and by the door before Sakura could even work out what had happened. When he spoke his voice seemed lower.

"You should get some rest, Sakura. I'm going to send word to the Hokage."

"Kakashi…" she started in barely a whisper, her own voice cracked with turbulent emotion.

"Get some sleep. You're tired." he stated firmly. An order. Then he added more kindly, "It's all going to be okay. I promise."

Sakura could only nod dumbly as she watched the door close behind him.

_I've heard that before,_ she thought glumly.

* * *

Kakashi smoothed the paper in his hands against his knee and gave it one more read through. Satisfied that the message was clear, to-the-point, and contained all the information it needed to, he rolled it up neatly before tucking it inside the bandages of his fastest ninken, Ūhei.

"This is for the Hokage and the Hokage only." he said to the large brown dog, patting it firmly on its haunches.

With a low growl and what could only be construed as a nod, the animal turned on its heel and pelted off down the dirt track at an alarming speed.

"And why am I here?" came the gruff voice at Kakashi's ankles.

"I need you to stay with Sakura. She shouldn't be on her own right now."

"And where are you going while I'm babysitting?"

"I just need some time to think." Kakashi stated simply before turning towards the establishment next door to their motel, a smoky noise filled bar with a large paint peeling sign that said "The Duck and Dive."

Pakkun let out a long exasperated sigh before trotting into the reception room of Kakashi's motel. He wrinkled his sensitive nose in disgust as the smell of sex and sickly sweet body oil hit him.

"Gone to drown his sorrows while I deal with the fallout…Has to take his subordinate to a brothel!…Stupid brat!...No biscuits either…Trust him...'The Strawberry Kunoichi'…Good God, what was he thinking?..." The pug grumbled the whole way up to the room.

* * *

Sakura lifted the little dog off the floor and carried him to the bed, ignoring the obscenities that he was currently hurling her way. She plonked him heavily in her lap and began scratching him softly behind the ears. At once his hind leg started beating out a steady rhythm against the bedsheets and all complaints about being so abruptly manhandled died on his lax jowls.

"See? That's not so bad is it?" she cooed.

Pakkun took a while to study her through his heavily lidded eyes. She'd been crying and honestly looked like she needed to curl up and get some sleep. He was about to tell her so when he spotted a folded up piece of paper in her other hand.

"What that?" he inquired.

"This?" Sakura said quietly, unfolding the paper to show him. "It's a drawing Sai did of all of us together."

The pug chuckled, a thick raspy grate, which sounded more like a vacuum cleaner having an asthma attack. "That's really good. Sai's very talented. Not many people could capture Kakashi's lazy ass that accurately."

Sakura smiled back before her face crumpled.

"Sakura…please don't cry." The pug whined, licking her hand with his long pink tongue.

"I-Im s-s-sorry." she sobbed. "I just can't lose any more people. Naruto and Sai are like my family a-and I'm just so s-scared…and then I tried to kiss K-Kakashi. I don't know what I was thinking! …And I think h-he's mad at m-me and I'm justsoworriedandemotional!" she wailed.

Pakkun fixed her with a level look. "You tried to kiss Kakashi?!" he asked incredulously.

Embarrassment flooded her cheeks as she looked away.

"Heh. Well, I can't say I'm impressed with your choice of mate, but it's only natural. In times of crisis the first instinct is to reproduce. It's the body's natural reaction to try and repopulate in times of war."

"PAKKUN!" she shrieked in disbelief.

"What? It's true…Besides, you've stopped crying now." he chuffed in amusement.

Sakura started to giggle and soon waves of raking laughter were jostling both of them, causing the bed to slosh and sway under them.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing…" Sakura tried to stifle her laughter against her hand. "It's just…that…."

"Spit it out, woman!"

"He…Kakashi…" more giggles. "He…booked us into a sex motel!!" Her eyes were streaming as the pug joined in with her laughter. "And the funny thing is…he's the one running away thinking I was being too forward!"

When she finally got her breath back and stopped laughing, the expression of loss and depression slowly crept back over her features.

"Now, now. None of that." Pakkun grumbled. "You know what will cheer you up?"

She looked up at him through a curtain of hair in time to see him hold a paw out proudly in front of her.

"Press my paw pads. They're really soft and supple."

* * *

Kakashi sat at the back of the real Duck and Dive (he really didn't see how it was his fault that he'd gotten the signs mixed up. He had been delirious and on the verge of passing out at the time!) in the darkest, dingiest corner booth, nursing a large tankard of beer. He pulled his mask down and let it pool around his throat while he took his first long sip of the disappointingly warm amber liquid.

Normally, he would never advocate drinking on the job unless a mission required it for some reason, but to be honest, this had been a spectacularly crappy couple of days. He had lost two fellow shinobi. More than that, he had lost someone who was surprisingly important to him. Even Sai had been starting to grow on him. And again, it felt like it was completely his fault. Now they were down to only two original members of Team Seven: himself and Sakura. Sakura who had just attempted to seek comfort in a way that Kakashi would not - no - _could_ _not_ give her.

He could just imagine the fallout of fraternizing with his only remaining female subordinate. He really couldn't afford to lose her, too, and lose her he would have if he'd stayed in that bedroom another minute.

Hatake Kakashi prided himself in many things and often in things that other people thought he had no right to take pride in. He was one of Konoha's most successful and ruthless weapons, he was a master of closer to two thousand jutsus, most of which were unoriginal. This had never bothered him, even though he was known across the continent as "The Copy Nin," a less than complimentary nickname that had become more of a title as his ability and reputation grew.

He often read pornographic literature in public, which had earned him the reputation of a bit of a pervert. This also did not bother him and instead, he took pride in the fact that maybe someone, after seeing him with said pornographic literature, would go out and buy an installment of _Icha Icha_. If he could convert anyone into a rabid fanboy of the franchise, then brilliant! The more copies sold, the more chance for a third film.

There were two things, however, that Kakashi did not pride himself in:

One, Kakashi did not take pride in his ability to lose the important people in his life before he had really realized that they were just that - important. The idea of seeing another two names carved on the cenotaph made him feel physically sick.

The other was his dire track recorded with the ladies. They all loved him, they all wanted to be "important" to him, but Kakashi was a ninja. Ninjas go on missions and die. This never made for a particularly concrete basis for a relationship. A whore or your hand seemed to be the best kind of relationship for a ninja the way Kakashi saw it. And Sakura? She was too young and too full of life to have to endure_ his _warped view of love. Quite simply, she meant too much to him for that.

He picked up his glass and drained it in one long gulp before setting it down and waving at the waitress for a refill.

She took one look at his unmasked face before trotting off red faced to pour him another.

"Dammit…" Kakashi all but growled.

On her way back over to him, beer bottle balanced precariously on a little silver tray and putting a little too much sway in her hips, her arse was slapped by a burly man sitting with his friends in the booth before Kakashi. The poor waitress, not expecting the wandering hand, pitched forward and landed heavily on her knees. Kakashi's beer smashed, foaming across the garishly carpeted floor.

A rowdy holler of cheers chorused as Kakashi quickly helped the poor waitress to her feet.

"That was a bit unnecessary, don't you think?" Kakashi said, slapping a firm hand on the offender's wide shoulder, a large bald man with a scarred, mean looking face. "I think you owe me a beer and this young lady an apology."

"Sit down, lil boy." The man in question snarled, turning back to his companions and carrying on with his conversation as if Kakashi wasn't even there.

"I said…" Kakashi started patiently.

"An' I says fuck off, ya little shit, 'fore me an' my boys beat the living 'ell out of ya…"

"…erm, Michi…I don't think you should start anything with this guy." One of his companions spoke up, a skinny, greasy looking man with long, mousy hair.

"Eh? Why not?"

"That there is Hatake Kakashi."

"Who?"

"You know, 'The Great Copy Nin Kakashi'."

Kakashi rolled his eye and the other man visibly paled.

"O-oh…right…" Michi stammered, then turned to the waitress. "Sorry, luv. Me 'n the boys is just getting a bit jolly. Didn't mean to scare ya. Get this man anything he wants on us."

The waitress nodded and scurried off, shooting Kakashi a grateful smile.

"Sorry 'bout that, Hatake, sir. I got sacked today. I was jus' letting my 'air down. Didn't mean no offense."

"None taken." Kakashi replied pleasantly, placated by the promise of free drinks.

"Yeah, that bastard Nakamizu fired us without severance pay. If he didn't have so many bloody guards, we'd of scalped the fucker." The smaller man supplemented.

"Nakamizu?" Kakashi asked, his interest suddenly piqued. "Nakamizu Hiroto?"

"Yeah, tha's the bastard."

"Hmm, why don't you boys tell me a little more about this shithead boss of yours?" Kakashi said, neatly slipping into the booth alongside Michi and his crew.

One thing Kakashi was very proud of at that moment was his blind luck.


	12. Chapter 11: Pride and Paper Cuts

Thanks to my beta **ShipperTrish** for her time and effort on this chappy!

* * *

**Chapter 11:**_**Pride and Paper Cuts. **_

Umino Iruka, like the many desk workers before him and probably the many desk workers that would come after him, hated Mondays, but he _really_ hated Mondays. He hated everything about them: The 4:30 a.m. start, the fact that the coffee machine was always in need of a refill, and the fact that his whole body protested the return to the bone grinding routine so vehemently. He hated Mondays with an unparalleled and fiery passion, mainly because Mondays were known as "Hand In Day" and "Hand In Day" was a day when it seemed like every man and his dog were out to make his life a seething, crawling misery.

Since his colleagues and superiors were ninjas who were not often afforded the luxury of a weekend, none of them seemed to take notice of this fact…or quite deliberately ignored it.

It was almost a given that if a team came back from a mission on a Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday, then their mission report would somehow fail to see the light of day until late Monday morning. Usually, all ninjas were given a day or two of "down time" after each long mission, but the ninjas that came back to the village on a Friday evening quite often had to be hunted down like animals if you expected them to go back on duty any earlier than Sunday night.

Iruka himself always had Saturday evenings and Sundays off and because of the high stress nature of his _other_ job teaching prepubescent hell beasts how to throw sharp, pointy objects. He really thought he deserved the thirty-six hours of bliss that was his "weekend" to ward off the gray hairs and worry lines that threatened to mar his kind and youthful face.

Juggling work at the Academy as well as his frequent shifts at the Mission Room really did wear him down. His timetable was an extreme patchwork of events that often required him to be at two places at once. Thank the gods for Shadow Clones.

So, Iruka treasured his weekends, quite often rejoicing in the fact that for a short period of time he could get away with doing absolutely nothing, but just because he was one of the few ninja in the village that _could _count on a relatively peaceful, glorious, and relaxing weekend didn't mean he deserved the hideous torture that was the Monday morning ritual of rounding up late mission reports, sorting through the bogus ones, and getting those rewritten.

Bogus mission reports were a constant thorn in the Academy sensei's side because quite a few of the jounin had come to find it to be fucking bloody hysterical to see whose report would be the first to get cute, blushing little Iruka-sensei to blow a gasket on a Monday morning.

It had become a game, one that had originated a little over six months ago when a team of the village's most elite jounin had come back from a particularly brutal mission, bone weary and all ready to drop dead late on a Friday night. Instead of seeking out medical assistance and handing their mission reports in like good little ninjas, they had gone down to the pub and gotten completely and utterly obliterated. At some point Raidou, one of the more sensible members of the group, had spoken up, reminding them all about the compulsory mission reports and _that_ had resulted in eight drunkenly scribbled and blurry accounts of what had happened during their three week long mission to Lightening Country. The reports Iruka had found crammed into his pigeon box on that Monday were inaccurate, vague, and largely irrelevant. In fact, Iruka could remember word for word all eight of those reports, which he had found beer stained and almost illegible that fateful morning.

Genma's in particular had held such a poignant resonance with Iruka that the poor chuunin had found himself reciting it in the shower on many a rainy day.

*

_There was a fat whore from Lightening,_

_Whose smile was less than inviting,_

_But she flashed me her jugs,_

_Then gave me a tug,_

_And I came even though she was frightening._

_Signed: Genma (the stud)_

_*_

Iruka hated limericks and hated vulgarity, but he had to admit, Genma had a way with words. It was damn catchy. If the poem had focused more on the strategies or logistics employed in the apprehension of the group of lesser known missing nins that were financially backing an underground drug ring, Iruka _might_ have accepted his mission report. No, he would have if_, IF_ it had been even slightly relevant or _IF_ one of the other men in the team had handed in something more detailed and accurate or even vaguely mission report shaped.

But he didn't. _THEY_ didn't…Not even close.

It also transpired that Genma had used his share of the "expense fund" to procure the attention of said "frightening whore from Lightening." You really weren't supposed to do that…

That day Iruka had cried, laughed, and cried some more.

Then, he had found Kakashi's report, scrawled across a yellow napkin in red leaky ballpoint, a mysterious almost butterfly shaped red symbol printed in the top most corner and Iruka, being the diligent hard working ninja he was, had trotted off to the archives with a small following of trainee code breakers in the hopes of finding which elusive cipher the Copy Nin had used to encode his mission report. Iruka was sure the Great Sharingan Kakashi, who had obviously spent time using an elaborate code to secure the contents of his report, would definitely provide some proper intelligence into the elusive crime syndicate where the other seven men had failed.

Three hours later, Genma had turned up to personally apologize for the state of his own report and to let Iruka know he was going to reimburse the funds he had taken for his night of questionable pleasure. Upon seeing Iruka elbow deep in cipher scrolls and pouring over tables of elaborate symbols and hieroglyphics, Genma leaned over to peer at the scuffed and folded yellow napkin with his brow knitted in confusion. Then, he started laughing quietly, the ever present senbon perched between his lips bouncing up and down rhythmically with each shaky chuckle before saying the dreaded words:

"Iruka-sensei, that's not code, that's just Hatake's writing."

Iruka's face had crumpled in incredulity and Genma, taking his disbelieving expression as consent to translate, had snatched up the napkin to read aloud around a toothy feral grin.

"It says, 'We went to Lightening. We killed the criminals and saved the day. It took ages. Now I am going home to screw this pretty waitress. The end.' Hahaha! I saw Hatake leaving with her and I know for a fact that she doesn't look half as good the day after. Hey, Iruka, your eyebrow's twitching. Maybe you should get that seen to…Iruka?"

He was right. The large butterfly shaped symbol had turned out to be the smudged lipstick print of one of the looser waitresses of "The Silver Kunai," a jounin haunt that was at the epicenter of Konoha nightlife.

Iruka had punched the special jounin clean across the room and into a plate glass window. Talk about shooting the messenger.

Now almost every weekend the jounin would deliberately place bogus mission reports in Iruka's pigeonhole on a Saturday night after one too many bottles of beer. This was apparently done in "good humor" and they would always turn up after lunch on Mondays, otherwise known as "Hand In Day" to expect the wrath of the famously temperamental chuunin and to watch in awe as his cheeks flared more vibrantly red with each passing hour. Eventually, he would explode in a fiery display that would have the walls of the Mission Room quaking before collapsing into his worn leather chair with a look of complete dejection. The lucky jounin whose tatty faux mission report had been the straw to break the proverbial camel's back would, in compensation for his injuries, be treated to a large bottle of expensive sake and Iruka would always find two tickets for free Ichiraku ramen on his desk by Wednesday. So while Iruka hated Mondays, he loved Wednesdays.

So Iruka approached his worn wooden pigeonhole outside the Mission Room's double doors with an air of resignation, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and preparing himself for the inevitable. Then, his mouth dropped open upon realizing his pigeonhole was completely empty, no bogus reports, no doodle covered napkins, no signed lacy undergarments. Iruka looked in shock and confusion over his shoulder at the large calendar hanging in the too bright corridor.

_Yep, definitely Monday. Hmm..._

Feeling a growing sense of suspicion and optimism at the same time, Iruka strode purposefully through the double doors and into the Mission Room. There, he spotted Kotetsu and Izumo chatting quietly by the coffee machine and Genma, Mr. Stud himself, lounging casually in _his_ chair with his muddy sandals on _his _beautiful walnut hand carved desk.

"Genma, feet." Iruka said with a deep scowl.

"Iruka-sensei! How goes it this fine morning?" Genma greeted back with his trademark lopsided grin as a thin metal senbon seemed to roll of its own accord across the thin line of his lips.

"Fine, thank you, Genma. What, no witty limericks to keep me busy? No purple prose to brighten my day?"

"Iruka-sensei, your sarcasm wounds me." Another grin and another circuit of thin metal. "Naw...To be honest, everyone's a bit freaked out about this mole problem. Doesn't seem the time for practical jokes, hmm?"

Kotetsu spoke up from around a polystyrene cup of bitter filtered coffee. "Wow, a whole week without you psychopathic jounin extending our already criminal working hours?"

"Psychopathic?" Genma asked, quirking one suspiciously well manicured eyebrow.

"No need to be rude, Kotetsu." Iruka murmured. "What do you expect from men who learned to kill before they could spell their own names?" He couldn't help the tiny tug of a smile that pulled at his lips. It was a well known fact that to progress beyond the rank of chuunin you needed to be both talented and borderline certifiable. The prerequisites for ANBU were even foggier.

"And what was the last mission related injury _you_ sustained, Iruka? A paper cut?" Genma bit out from around the lethal toothpick. "I'll have you know the ladies love us unpredictable, highly ranked types. Us psychopathic jounin? Swimming in women. Swimming." He stated smugly while miming the breaststroke.

"Swimming in STD's more like." piped Izumo.

"Won't it be sad if _it_ drops off from over use before you can make any little screaming Shiranuis?" Kotetsu giggled.

"You're jumping the gun if you think Genma or any of those other crazies will be selectively reproducing anytime soon. That implies an ability to hold down a steady relationship. These guys can't even hand in a mission report!" Iruka said, laughing heartily as narrowed eyes slid to appraise him coldly.

"Actually, I have that base covered. Konoha's sperm bank is the proud recipient of twelve vials of prime, red blooded, devastatingly attractive micro wrigglers ready to bring joy and happiness to infertile couples everywhere, so don't worry about my legacy. It's all in hand." Genma smiled once again, waggling his eyebrows in perfect synchronization with the bobbing senbon.

"God, I hope they put warning labels on those things. Seems unfair that potential mothers would have no idea what they were getting themselves in for." Iruka commented dryly before continuing with mimed air quotes. "Warning: Contains notions of grandeur, impossibly large ego, and tendency to flock to reflective surfaces. Inseminate with caution. Hell spawn may arise…"

Suddenly, the special jounin was on him, pulling his arm behind his back and rubbing his knuckles across his pony-tailed scalp viciously.

Iruka shrieked in outrage as he was unceremoniously face planted into his desk and long strands or dark mahogany hair came loose around his shoulders.

"Genma! Get offa me, you jerk!"

"No…say 'Genma is the man and I'm a boring loser'…"

"Eh?…OW! NO!"

"Say it. Say it!" Each word punctuated by a sharp burning rub across Iruka's skull and much to his annoyance the sound of laughter emanating from his traitorous companions.

"Genma, you're a freakin' idiot. Ow, ow, OW!"

"Ha. I am not letting you go until you say it…"

"Arg! FINE!" Iruka screamed. "Genma is the m-"

"How wonderful to see my esteemed colleagues enjoying the spirit of camaraderie! It fills my soul with the springtime of youth and makes me glad to be alive and part of this great and wondrous nation!" A familiar bellowing tenor boomed.

"Saved by the overbearing personality." Genma hissed in Iruka's ear from the corner of his mouth.

"Gai-san…" Iruka puffed through a curtain of disheveled hair as Genma begrudgingly released the stranglehold on his arm. "What can I do for you?"

The eccentric jounin stood in his familiar green spandex, beaming across at the two men, and displaying two rows of perfect white teeth.

Iruka was, for what must have been the thousandth time, almost blinded by the luminous smile that seemed to be a light source all of its own in the dingy room. Honestly, Iruka had often wondered if Gai had to duct tape his mouth shut on night ops. One, because the green clad jounin was so exuberantly loud that in theory he could wake the dead and two, as soon as he opened his mouth in the first place, even the eternally dark and swampy forests of Earth Country would be lit up by a light source almost as radiant as the sun. It must be a real pain on stealth missions.

"Ah, my dear Iruka-sensei. I have come to hand in my report!" Gai said, brandishing a crisp and pristine sheet of A4 paper in one hand and giving him a bold thumbs up with the other.

Iruka let out a relieved breath and smiled kindly at the older man. He looked over the form and nodded in appreciation. Gai was the only jounin who handed in his reports on time, which were also filled with impressive, if slightly glorified detail. His writing was always neat, his spelling and grammar flawless, and Iruka often found his sensei persona, wishing he could reward neat, accurate mission reports with gold stars. One day he would have to let Gai know how much he appreciated this. Quite often when reading some of the other jounin mission reports he had the overwhelming urge to whip out a red pen and stamp "–F" in the corner with "must try harder" written in the margin.

Turning his not so blinding smile up to the tall, fuzzy browed man, Iruka said with great honesty, "Thank you for your hard work."

Yes, if Iruka could give out gold stars, then Gai would be at the top of the class.

As Iruka watched Konoha's self professed "Beautiful Blue Beast" leave the room with another mission scroll gripped tightly in his fist, he couldn't help but think that this Monday wasn't turning out so bad after all.

That was until a large bandaged dog jumped through the window behind him and landed with a clattering thud on his desk as large claws tore deep grooves into the beautiful walnut surface.

Iruka, Genma, Kotetsu, and Izumo all stood open mouthed as the dog turned to level them all with a stern and appraising doggy look before it chuffed dismissively and leaped onto the floor, made its way over to the double doors, and skilfully pushed them open with its front paws before leaving the room without a backwards glance.

"My…my desk…" Iruka whispered mournfully, tracing the thick scars across the once brilliant and flawless surface. He had managed to keep that desk free from coffee rings and ink spillages or any other tarnishing mark for well over a year. He had bought it with his last field mission pay slip, which had been a hefty B-rank that was the equivalent of a good four months of his teaching salary. He didn't really want to take another B-rank mission anytime soon. Genma was right, paper cuts and screaming demonic children were about as dangerous as his life got these days, although children _could_ be quite dangerous.

"Hn. You can bill Hatake for that when he gets back from wherever the hell his is." Genma supplied helpfully, reading the younger man's mind.

"Huh?" said the three chuunin in unison.

"Well, it's his dog. I swear that's the one that's always trying to hump my leg."

"'Bout the only thing that will…" muttered Kotetsu.

"Kakashi's dog?" Iruka groaned. "I'm never going to get compensation from him, am I?"

Yep, Monday, also known as "Hand In Day" was the day when every man and his dog seemed out to make Iruka's life a seething, crawling misery, even the ones who weren't currently in the village.

* * *

Tsunade sat at her desk with her fingers steepled carefully in front of her face and stared with mixed amusement and annoyance at the scene before her. Shizune was holding a squealing and clearly terrified Tonton high above her head in both hands while a large bandaged brown and white canine that looked a mix between a Doberman Pincher and an Ibizan Rabbit Hound wove in and out of Shizune's legs barking something that sounded suspiciously like "_Sausages_" and spraying saliva as it went.

Slamming her hand down on the desk with splintering force, Tsunade instantly commanded the attention of the excited mutt who shot Tonton one last longing look (accompanied with a long lick of a pink tongue over white muzzle) before tottering over to sit beside the Hokage diligently, presenting the scroll tucked into its bandages with an oddly majestic low bow.

It was then that Shiranui Genma entered the room carrying a precariously tall pile of mission reports to be stamped.

"Are you bothering my desk workers again, Shiranui? Don't you have a home to go to?" Tsunade asked without looking up from the scroll she was now unsealing.

"I'm just helping Iruka with his paperwork, Hokage-sama. He seems to have had a slight nervous breakdown on account of his desk being ruined."

"What, that nice expensive walnut one?"

"The very same."

"Shame."

"Shame indeed."

"Well, you can make yourself useful and stop gawking at my assistant. I need you to find me the Nara boy."

With a sly wink, Genma dragged his eyes away from the now furiously blushing Shizune who was trying to coyly play with her hair whilst keeping a wriggling pot bellied pig out of harm's way.

"The Nara boy? Shikamaru?"

"Yes. He's one of the only code breakers I can trust with all this conspiracy rubbish that's been going on."

"If I may, Hokage-sama," Genma started, peering over at the abstract shapes and inked angles covering the scroll laid out on the desk in front of the Hokage's ample bosom, "You don't need a code breaker, just someone who can read Hatake's writing." He screwed his eyes shut in preparation for a blow that would send him flying through the Hokage's fourth story window…It never came.

Tsunade huffed in exasperation. "Well then Shiranui, What. Does. It. Say?" she said this slowly as if talking to a child while pushing the paper towards him with one manicured finger.

"Fine. Pen and paper? Just keep that bloody animal away from my leg."

* * *

_Mission Reference: C12 T7.5_

_Enemy Base of operations found at 34.7832°N, 138.733°E _

_Infiltration can confirm large organized enemy contingent with access to heavy artillery. Recommend that preparations against imminent hostile attack be put into place._

_Units 012607 and Root0048 are MIA, presumed dead. Request immediate recovery team of trusted ANBU to coordinates provided. Recommend my old squad as excavation is most probably required. _

_Recovered intelligence that one Nakamizu Hiroto may have some links to organization and possibly a direct link to individuals in Konoha. Will investigate further. Expect myself and Unit 012601 to return within 72 hours of receiving this message. _

_009720_

Tsunade sighed long and hard after rereading Genma's translation and moped her brow with a shaking hand. Opening a drawer in her desk, she withdrew a small blank scroll and an ivory handled fountain pen before writing down her reply in her clear precise script:

_Find out what this Nakamizu Hiroto knows, then extinguish the lives of anyone involved in the plot against Konoha. Subtlety is requested. ANBU unit will be dispatched. Rest assured we will bring our boys home. _

Rolling the short note up, she slipped it back into the dog's bandages who gave a very human nod of understanding before trotting across the room and slipping quietly out into the corridor. She quirked an eyebrow up at Genma who was standing stock still and to attention, the senbon tucked neatly behind his ear and his keen honey eyes fixed firmly on the Hokage's.

"I suppose you've gathered that Kakashi is pulling you out of retirement?"

"We both know ANBU are never really retired, Hokage-sama."

"Well, I suggest you dust off that porcelain cat mask of yours and go find your former teammates. Tell Ibiki I need to see him while you're at it. I have evacuation procedures to put into place."

His lips quirked up into a familiar lopsided smile. "Great, an old family reunion. I'm sure Tenzou and Yugao will be as pleased as ever to see me."

"You'll let Tenzou take point on this, Genma. He has invested interest in those kids."

"I'm sure the Root kid and the Kyuubi brat are fine, Hokage-sama," he replied, trying to make light of the situation and ease the older woman's obvious distress.

"Bring my boys home, Shiranui. That _brat_ is like a grandson to me. Do not even think about walking back through those gates without them whatever condition they're in. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." Deliberately keeping his eyes fixed on his feet as he moved, Genma spun on his heel and strode purposefully out of the office. He had politely averted his gaze when the Hokage's eyes had started tearing ever so slightly and even though the small break in her voice could have been blamed on any number of things, Genma knew without a shadow of a doubt that this retrieval mission was highly personal to the fearsome woman.

* * *

When Kakashi had walked back into the hotel room at dawn, he had been greeted by what could only have been described as one of the most endearing sights he had ever seen.

There, sprawled across the middle of the bed, was one Haruno Sakura. She was wearing one of his now clean jounin shirts while her own uniform still hung drying on the radiator. The long navy blue sleeves completely covered her hands and her chin length hair fanned out across the pillow. The soft light that was just starting to filter in from underneath the curtains picked up the soft highlights of her hair so that it shone like a halo around her delicate features. She had one arm slung possessively around the small bundle of fluff and folds that was his favorite ninken who had corkscrewed himself tightly into the curve of her side.

If it wasn't for the lurid leopard print backdrop, Kakashi thought that the image before him looked almost like the type of scene depicted on charmingly ambiguous greetings cards. You know, the kind you give harmless deaf grandmothers to thank them for useless book vouchers. Cards with photographed pictures shot with soft bloom lighting that often depicted cherub faced little girls hugging fluffy bunnies, but from the way his oversized shirt was riding up over the high curve of her ass, he knew she was no cherub faced little girl and his passive-aggressive summon, he knew from experience, was no fluffy bunny.

Pakkun himself had been apparently disrobed, his little blue jacket and headband neatly folded on a footstool at the end of the bed. This rankled Kakashi slightly as he stood gazing at the content duo. The dog threw a hissy fit every time Kakashi tried to take Pakkun's clothes off to give the pug a bath, the phrase "I'm naked!" thrown in amongst colorful expletives and dangerous growls, but here his summon was looking every bit like a _normal_ dog in the arms of a girl who was treating him like a favorite old teddy bear. He was more than a little surprised the volatile little monster had allowed it.

As if sensing his master's close scrutiny, the pug cracked open an eye and spoke in a low raspy voice.

"Stop staring at her ass, Kakashi."

"I'm not."

"Then stop staring at mine."

"You're naked."

"She said my headband was scratchy and that she couldn't rub my belly properly with my jacket in the way."

"So to get you in the bath I need to promise you belly rubs?"

"You're not as good as her. Longer nails, you see."

"Traitor." mumbled Kakashi, easing himself into the plush heart shaped armchair in the corner of the room and propping his feet up on the footstool, ignoring Pakkun's grumbles about getting dirty sandals on his clothes.

"So, had enough time to 'think,' eh Kakashi?"

"Hn."

"She isn't the delicate little flower you think you know."

"I don't think that."

"She told me what happened."

"Hn."

"Well?" the dog growled.

"Well, what?"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"She likes you."

"Shut up."

"So…why not?"

"A hundred reasons."

"Like?" the pug prodded.

"Like she's too young, she's my subordinate, I used to be her teacher, she still calls me 'sensei,' she's just lost two of her teammates, two of her closest…Why are we even having this discussion? Since when did you show any interest in my love life or lack thereof?"

"(huff) I just like her, that's all. She smells nice and actually holds quite a good conversation for a human."

"She smells of you. That doesn't equate to smelling nice."

"It's better than smelling like a brewery." The pug shot back.

"I was following up a lead…or at least I ended up following up a lead."

"Anything important?"

"Yes, actually."

"Well, shouldn't you wake her and get moving?"

"I already have a plan and we can't move till nightfall anyway. I don't think strolling back into Taki in broad daylight will go down too well, not after we conveniently disappeared after the explosion on their territory."

"Well, shouldn't you fill her in on the details?"

"I'll let her sleep a little longer. She looks peaceful like that." Kakashi murmured sleepily.

"She's not the only one who's lost two teammates, Kakashi."

"I know." Kakashi mumbled almost incoherently before closing his own eyes and slipping into a restless sleep.


	13. Chapter 12: The Best Laid Plans…

_Thank you again to ShipperTrish for her betaness!_

* * *

**Chapter 12:**_**The Best Laid Plans…**_

Nakamizu Hiroto stretched out languidly on a brightly upholstered recliner, revelling in the cool breeze that filtered through the trees into the courtyard of his oversized stately home. A platter of exotic fruits and cured meats to his left and a large decanter of fine red wine to his right had a wet grin forming all over Hiroto's face. Really, there was no better way to enjoy the warm humid summer nights in Takigakure. Only the synchronized grunts and shouts echoing off the tall brick walls around him broke his sublime peace of mind. Plucking a grape from the spread of edible heaven next to him, he rolled the small piece of fruit back and forth between his large fingers before throwing it at the head of his nearest target.

The target in question caught the marble sized projectile with expected ease before calmly stepping away from his training partner and turning his gaze upon his would be attacker.

"Is something wrong, Nakamizu-sama?"

"Do you really have to do that here?!" he bellowed to the group of men performing an intricate series of katas on the large cobbled courtyard before him.

At once all the men present stepped out of their choreographed routines and dropped into low elegant bows.

Again, the man nearest to him spoke up. What was his name anyway? Kenda? Kenta? That was it! Kenta.

"Nakamizu-sama, with the doubling of guards since the incident at the training base, we are finding it hard to find open spaces to train without drawing attention to ourselves."

"Well, aren't you supposed to be guarding something or killing something or looking after my girls?" Hiroto replied with an airy wave of a thick chubby hand.

"The next rotation isn't for another hour." Kenta replied patiently.

"Very well." Hiroto sighed long and hard. "Carry on. Just stop all that shouting and bellowing. I can barely hear myself think."

"Yes, Nakamizu-sama." Kenta bowed before turning back to his partner and falling easily back into the fluid sparring routine.

Aside from his own personal guard, Hiroto hated ninjas. They were dangerous, unpredictable, violent, and cost the earth. He had a good mind to sack the lot of them if it wasn't for the insistence of their presence by Kuma and if there was ever a man Nakamizu Hiroto hated, truly _hated_,it was Kuma. The man was all of those things and more. He was intimidating, irritatingly quiet, and ever so slightly creepy, but he was also going to make Hiroto ridiculously rich and subsequently that would make Takigakure ridiculously rich and Hiroto was no fool. Wealth meant power and stability, something that his country had not had an abundance of for at least two decades. It was only a matter of time before a weak, small hidden village like Taki found itself crushed by the immense powers pressing in on its borders from all sides and for the hundredth time since all of this mess started, Hiroto found himself justifying his actions. Taki _needed_ this and when all was said and done, Hiroto felt sure that he would be exalted as a hero and not a traitor.

It was during this line of thought that Hiroto felt the familiar prickle of fear needling into the base of his skull and chastised himself irrationally for summoning the devil with only his thoughts.

Kuma stood by his side watching his men silently dancing through the precise movements of their katas and did not bother to announce his arrival by any other means than the heavy aura he exuded.

For a bloated and pampered civilian, Hiroto was growing quite adept at sensing Kuma's presence and although Hiroto tried to hide how affected he truly was by that presence by shoveling yet _more_ food into his canyon of a mouth, Kuma still noticed the way Hiroto's eyebrows pinched up in the middle and how he drew the green velvet expanse of his robes a little tighter around him.

"Hiroto," he began without preamble, "The next group are ready to commence secondary training."

"Ah. Where will you be training them now that…err…"

"Our last location has been compromised? Here."

"Here?!" Hiroto squeaked in disbelief. "But…but…"

"Yes, here. You have quite enough space. Don't worry yourself. I'll keep them on a short leash, but you may want to find another area to enjoy your afternoon indulgences."

Finally, Hiroto turned to face the man standing beside him and instantly wished he hadn't. Cold empty eye sockets stared back at him from the polished contours of the mask, its red painted tear lines a striking contrast to the pearlescent primer. Hiroto shuddered, marveling that no matter what the lighting conditions, those masks always seemed to glow.

"Of course, Kuma." he replied in a flat tone, resigning himself to the situation.

"Good. I bought a little something to keep you occupied." With a snap of his fingers a woman was brought before him. She was, as usual, staggeringly beautiful with fine, delicate features and as with all the others her expression was dull and lifeless.

"Say 'hello'." Kuma instructed.

"Hello." The girl intoned in a small pleasant voice, smiling a textbook smile down at Hiroto.

Without much interest he asked, "Another dud?"

"The mark didn't take. She won't have long." Kuma replied, pushing the fabric of the girl's dress up over her bare hip and presenting Hiroto with a flash of creamy smooth rump.

Reaching out, Hiroto traced the mark with one finger, following the inflamed contours of its design before smoothing his hand across the girl's arse and giving it a firm squeeze.

The girl gave an automatic moan, deep and throaty while leaning into his hand, but all the while her face remained impassive, frozen in that strange half smile.

Hiroto studied his gift and gave a sharp nod of acceptance, retracting his hand and reaching for his wine. At least Kuma knew how to placate his host.

* * *

"Shit." Kakashi whispered, readjusting the dial on the binoculars and leaning further out of their sanctuary. One hand absently thumbed the note from Tsunade hidden deep in the pocket of his flak jacket.

"What?" Sakura hissed back, swinging her legs back and forth into the void in an attempt to stem her frustration. It was a childish action, but made her feel like she was actually _doing_ something.

Another minuscule shift beside her and another quietly mumbled _"shit"_ had her upping the pace of her rhythmic fidgeting in an attempt to irritate an answer out of her team leader.

Sensing her increasing annoyance, Kakashi gave her a quick stern glare and turned his gaze back into the binoculars, speaking quickly in low hushed tones.

"My intel seems a little inaccurate in terms of the numbers we would be facing, as well as the level of talent at the enemies' disposal. They're all Taki ninjas, mostly jounin and chuunin rank. They've got an ANBU with them and from the way he moves he's not just playing dress up. I can only read one half of the conversation because of that damn mask. Our orders are to eliminate all threats to Konoha. I didn't count on ANBU being part of the equation or the fact that we might have to wipe out at least twenty Taki ninjas. Even with the current circumstances that will be seen as an act of war."

"Surely the daimyo knows about this? He'd have to be a fool not to see what's going on right under his nose."

"He doesn't know. It's not unusual for a man with Hiroto's status to have hired help. Even if our actions tonight are traced back to Konoha and seen as an act of aggression, the daimyo is aware that Konoha can crush Taki. We just don't need to lose any more of our allies. Konoha's relationship with the countries this far north are strained at best, so we'll have to be subtle."

Another moment passed and then Kakashi spoke again. "Although I think we've definitely located our main target."

"How can you tell?"

"He fits the description: large, rich, and an arsehole. Trust mercs to give colourful, but accurate descriptions and I think we just secured evidence of his involvement. Here, take a look at the girl."

Grabbing the binoculars, Sakura shifted up the branch so that she could align herself with the small opening in the foliage to look down into the courtyard. It took awhile to locate the area she was supposed to be looking at and longer to adjust the binocular's settings and bring the image into focus, but when she did she could clearly see the distinct tattoo of an orchid sitting high on a young girl's exposed hip. Sakura growled when a thick hand started fondling the girl's behind and snapped her focus to its owner, instantly letting out a tiny cry of shock.

"_What is it?" _Kakashi hissed beside her.

"I…I…"

"Sakura?"

"That's definitely our target. The fat guy in the robes is definitely Nakamizu Hiroto." She whispered back, covering her mouth with a shaking hand.

"And you know this how?" he asked her with raised eyebrows, the Sharingan glowing dimly like embers in the darkness.

"Back in central Taki when Naruto, Sai, and I went out drinking and I…err…threw up on you." She grimaced at the memory. "Well, we got into a bar fight and-"

"Wait, wait. Are you telling me that Nakamizu was the 'filthy toad man' who 'touched you up'?" Kakashi asked with wide eyes.

"…err…yes. I didn't realize that at the time, though. He said he wanted to 'secure my attentions' for the evening."

"Huh. Well that makes sense. For all intents and purposes he does control eighty percent of the entertainment business here in Taki."

"Entertainment business?"

"According to my sources he owns almost all the brothels, bars, and casinos here. He was probably on the lookout for some new talent. Was he alone?"

"No, he had three ninjas with him, escorts or bodyguards I guess. Brothels? I didn't think Taki would allow something like that!"

"Taki has a rather different viewpoint of the roles of women." He muttered. "From here he appears completely civilian, but I can't stretch my senses out with an ANBU in the area. We'll be located in no time."

"He was definitely civilian. I was drunk and if he was a ninja he would have been able to block my mean right hook or at least try…Wait! He's leaving!" Sakura said, passing the binoculars back over.

Kakashi pressed them back to his own eyes and watched as the ANBU, Hiroto, and the young woman ventured back into the large manor.

"What did you mean about different viewpoints, Kakashi?"

"Taki, despite being a large village, is actually very small in terms of manpower. They don't allow kunoichi in their ranks and women in this society are expected to stick to traditional roles: domestic work, producing heirs, and entertainment."

"Entertainment." Sakura mumbled bitterly.

"Yes, dancers, singers, and whores. Because of its lack of power, Taki relies on its lax entertainment laws to encourage outside interest. It caters for the tastes of men from stricter countries. This makes up for the lower number of missions available to them and keeps the economy flowing. Taki has always struggled to compete in the ninja business because bigger, stronger countries surround it. They rely on training as many as they can just for defence."

"But wouldn't they have more strength if they had kunoichi? It seems ridiculous cutting your shinobi force by at least a third just because they have old fashioned views on women."

"Well that won't change anytime soon. Their views on disallowing women are strong ones. They believe that in battle women are a risk to their male counterparts because instinct pre-programs males to be automatically overprotective of their female teammates often leading to risk taking, bad judgment, self sacrifice, and so on. They also view a woman's stamina and strength as well as their resilience to harsher conditions as inferior."

"But that's ridiculous! I'm a woman and I could punch a hole through an eight foot thick wall better than any man I know and Tsunade can punch through a twenty foot thick wall!"

"I know, I know!" Kakashi sighed, holding his hands up pleadingly. "But generally those observations are correct and before you call me sexist, I also think that they are overlooking the benefits of training kunoichi. For one, as a woman your chakra control is often better. You're less likely to go storming into a situation unprepared and you are, depending on the situation, often the best candidates for espionage. And Taki is suffering for its viewpoints. Their top clans have become weak and diluted over the years. They've lost many of their signature jutsus and they tend to think that only the males' genetic coding is of value, so they breed indiscriminately. Subsequently, their attacks have remained strong in some areas, for example, their use of water jutsu, but weak in other varying styles."

"So all these girls…If they had originally come from Taki anyway they probably wouldn't even be missed."

"It wouldn't surprise me. It would be foolish to overlook the fact that Hiroto just happens to have access to hundreds of women on a daily basis, probably young girls without families just trying to get by."

"But if the shinobi of Taki are so genetically weak, how come all the girls we've seen have such awesome supplies of chakra? What are they doing to them?" Sakura asked, voicing the question Kakashi himself had been wondering.

"I don't know."

Just at that moment, the ANBU reappeared from one of the doors facing onto the courtyard, dragging the struggling body of a young girl behind him and for a second he seemed to pause and look right at them, his gaze piercing up through the leaves and branches, black hollow pits staring up from a waxy iridescent surface and then the spell was broken and he strode on, manoeuvring with ease despite the girl valiantly digging her heels into the cobbled surface. He disappeared into another door.

The group of shinobi still training in the courtyard didn't even acknowledge the girl's pleading wails for help.

"Don't you want to find out?" Sakura whispered, her face contorted in horror and her eyes still glued to the door the girl had been pulled through.

"We stick to the plan. The change of guard should be in about forty minutes, then we enter into Hiroto's chamber through the balcony window which is located on the far side of the manor. There, I'll implement a sound suppressing jutsu. You'll need to keep your chakra completely suppressed to avoid the ANBU detecting us. If he does, you need to take Hiroto and get out of here as fast as you can. I'll deal with the ANBU and meet you en route back to Konoha."

"But Kakashi-sensei, those girls need help and who better to help us understand what we are up against than one of the victims?"

"Nakamizu was the contact I was given. He's the person who we'll press for information. Sai risked a lot to get that name to us." Kakashi said sternly.

Sakura looked down at her hands ashamed, but then fixed her features in steely resolve. "But Kakashi-"

"Saving the girls is _not_ our mission. Eliminating the threat to Konoha is." He bit out harshly, knowing from the determined set of her features that she wasn't going to just let it go.

"I hate to be the one to point this out, but those girls _are_ the threat to Konoha. Don't you think we should find out what we are eliminating first?"

Kakashi sighed.

* * *

Snippets of conversation floated up from the group of five chattering ninja milling around in the crater below.

Even from his hiding space high above them in the canopy, Tenzou was awestruck by the scene of absolute devastation that stretched out before him. Despite the visual obstruction of the dense foliage and heavy darkness, the signs of the enormous explosion were blatantly obvious to someone as attuned to their surroundings as Tenzou was. The forest was, after all, more or less a part of him. Placing a gloved hand to the trunk of the tree he was comfortably squatting in, he sent out tiny indistinguishable threads of chakra probing and assessing the scale of damage. The trees in the surrounding area were almost screaming in agony, the natural flow of their energy disrupted and dying, their trunks charred and burned, their leaves scorched and heavy with the clinging residue of ash. Pushing his senses out further into the clearing and nearing the edge of the gaping wound in the earth, he began probing the ground, trying to discern from a distance how compacted the soil and debris had become.

"Did you feel that?" one of the ninja below whispered, looking around the area wildly, hand already inching towards his weapon pouch.

Instantly, Tenzou's breath caught in his throat as the ninja's hissed question snaked up on the breeze. Quickly retracting his chakra, Tenzou melded seamlessly into the trunk of the tree and waited.

"Feel what?" another spoke up, his voice colored with annoyance.

"Shh…I think someone's out there."

"Aww, is widdle Naoki scared of the dark?" came a mocking baritone.

"As if enemy ninja would be stupid enough to return to the scene of the crime. Idiot." Another of the group spoke up.

"But-"

"Why would anyone bother attacking this piss poor excuse for a training compound anyway? It's been disused for how long, Kazuki?"

"Over seven years." A deep gravely voice relayed. "Maybe longer. I took my chuunin exams here over ten years ago. Big underground arenas, sitting unused for nearly a decade. Sad."

"Do you get the feeling we're missing something here?"

"Yeah, but the ground's still too hot to start digging and it's too dark to work. We should just report back and send another team later."

"Can't we just cool it down with a water jutsu?"

"And risk a landslide of thick muddy topsoil? Brilliant idea, Naoki. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Point taken."

Tenzou waited patiently until the five chakra signatures faded from detection before separating himself from the absorbing comfort of the tree.

Fist clenched pointing upward at a ninety degree angle at the elbow, Tenzou signaled silently for his teammates to hold their positions and created a wood clone from the palm of his hand, which branched and twisted until an exact replica of himself was standing beside him on the thick bough.

The clone nodded once before falling silently to the forest floor and disappearing from sight.

Raising his hand to point his index finger skyward, Tenzou made a series of circular movements above his head and within moments two figures landed gracefully alongside him.

"So, Captain," came the hushed whisper of his female companion. "What's the plan?" Her midnight purple hair fell like a shroud across her shoulders, giving the delicately painted owl mask the appearance of floating in thin air.

Tenzou thought for a moment, considering the best course of action. Readjusting his gloves silently, he lifted his hands to form a familiar seal and felt his concentration shift as his clone dispersed and its gathered information filtered back to him.

"The Waterfall ninja have definitely left the area, but we can't be sure they won't come back. Owl, I want you to keep a parameter patrol of four hundred meters around our target area and let us know if we have any unexpected company. Cougar-" he said, shifting his gaze to study the grinning cat mask, "I'll need you to stay close to me as I work, make sure nothing takes me by surprise."

"Sure thing, Captain Beaver." Replied Cougar easily with a two fingered salute.

Tenzou heard Owl _tut_ in disgust quietly before dropping onto the forest floor in the same silent manner Tenzou's clone had.

"How many times do I have to tell you it's an Otter!" Tenzou hissed with as much indignant venom as he could muster while gesturing wildly at his mask with pointed index fingers.

"Well it should be a Beaver, after all-"

"If you even dare finish that wood joke I will use one of your senbon to staple your tongue to your oesophagus. Is that clear?"

"That's not even possible."

"Are you sure?"

There was a silent gulp and then a slightly miserable reply. "I forgot how much of a hard-arse you are to work with."

"And I forgot that working with you is like working with a horny, mentally retarded monkey."

"Heh, I've kinda missed this, you know? It's just like old times."

Despite his best efforts, Tenzou couldn't stop the small grin forming under the snug porcelain.

"Yeah, me too. Now let's find those kids."

* * *

As the shinobi that had been guarding Nakamizu's manor for the last five hours and fifty eight minutes waited patiently for their comrades to relieve them of their positions, two figures darted across the emptying courtyard unseen and unheard and slipped though one of the four doors that opened into various parts of the manor.

They found themselves at the top of a flight of stairs that seemed to lead down into a basement of some sorts. Instantly, the smell of disinfectant assaulted their senses.

"_Can you smell that?"_ Sakura mouthed at Kakashi who only nodded back glumly, whispering a single word that Sakura knew was one of his only fears.

"_Hospital."_

Slowly, they descended and became more and more aware of the pulsing thrum of chakra pushing at their senses. Lots of it.

"This is definitely the place." Sakura whispered, stepping off the last step and into a large rectangular room with white walls and two long rows of hospital beds.

The room was lit not by bright sterile strip lighting like Kakashi had expected, but by the dim flickering of television screens.

As they walked silently through the room, Kakashi counted twenty four beds. In each bed, except two, lay a girl strapped down by thick leather restraints on each wrist and foot with wider triple belted fastenings across her waist and hips. Each of the patients' stared glassy eyes into the cluster of small screens stationed only inches above their faces, their ears covered with large black headphones.

Sakura ventured forward to one girl who showed no awareness of their presence.

Kakashi caught Sakura's arm with a gloved hand and let out a low, stern "Careful..."

Gently, she brought a hand to the girl's bare arms and shook her gently. When the girl failed to respond, she leaned in closer, removing the headphones and whispered quietly into her ear.

"Can you hear me? If you can hear me, blink twice."

The girl remained silent and her eyes unblinking.

"Kakashi, these girls are practically catatonic!"

Walking forward, Kakashi lifted the set of headphones and listened intently while kneeling down to watch the small flickering screens. Images of blood and gore cycled past at high speed on one screen. On another, stills from standard ninja training manuals flashed past.

Lifting his headband to allow himself time to digest the high speed images, Kakashi noted that one screen in particular seemed to be repeating a chapter on chakra theory over and over. He knew because he had studied that textbook himself a very long time ago.

Another of the screens showed some of the most aggressive pornography Kakashi had ever seen, so much so that even he felt a little revolted. The flickering screens seemed to meld together until a jumping mosaic of sex, violence, discipline, and technique seemed to twist and turn around him, all the while the headphones chattered, overlying instructions too indistinct to make out.

It wasn't until Sakura's hand griped his shoulder and gave him a none too gentle shake that he was snapped back to reality and dropped the headphones to the bed with a look of shock.

"I said 'What is it, Kakashi?'" Sakura repeated for the third time, her eyes full of worry. "You okay? You kinda spaced out on me for a moment there."

"Brainwashing." The Copy Nin intoned with his usual indifference, now fully back in control of his composure.

"Brainwashing?!"

"Yes. They're being conditioned, reprogrammed. The screens are feeding information into their brains and both audio and subliminal messaging is being used to reinforce these lessons. They're teaching them to fight, teaching them to infiltrate."

"But that's crazy!" Sakura hissed.

"No, it's not. It's something I haven't seen practiced for a long time, but it's a way to teach people complex tasks in the quickest time possible."

"I understand you can learn how to cook a soufflé by watching the cooking channel, but teaching girls with presumably no experience how to be a ninja? That's insane! It takes years to master even the most basic of ninja concepts. Why else would we be taught from four years old!" she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

"It only takes years to learn because you need to function on other levels. You need social skills, you need ambition and faith, and you need more than just a task or mission. These girls are just husks. Whoever they were before has been stripped away. They don't need years to learn techniques and concepts because there's nothing else getting in the way: no opinions or personal feelings, no residual memories, no inhibitions, just empty gray matter ready to absorb everything thrown at it like a sponge."

"If they have no social skills, how have they been infiltrating Konoha unnoticed? From what we've seen of them they've been aggressive and foul mouthed, but not without basic social skills!"

"Their social skills are programmed, Sakura. Every response, programmed."

"And the sex thing? Back at the base they were all eager to drop their panties on command!" she said, feeling her face heat up.

"Well…They are supposed to be able to infiltrate. Kunoichi have to be able to use other means of persuasion other than fists and roundhouse kicks and I also doubt Hiroto would just give up his girls without some benefits other than just money."

"How do you know so much about this?"

"Doesn't it look at all familiar?" Kakashi said, looking at the bedridden girl with a sad expression. "The vacant smiles, the lost expressionless eyes?"

"Sai." Sakura whispered, thinking of her lost friend. "It's just like how he was before, before Naruto helped him remember." Then, a look of comprehension crossed her features. "THIS! _This_ is Root's involvement!"

"It looks that way."

* * *

Standing in the enormous crater, Genma whistled long and low. Assessing that they were indeed alone, he pushed the cougar mask up and wiped his brow on the back of his gloved hand, reflexively placing a thin, familiar piece of metal between his teeth to stem his anxiety.

"Tenzou…this is…well, it's all fucked, isn't it? I really don't see how-" he fell silent, taking in the enormity of the destruction surrounding them and shifting his feet as the heat from the ground bore into the soles of his feet, the bottom of his black ANBU issue sandals starting to melt into a gummy mess.

"What are our orders, Genma?" Tenzou said back, his own breath slightly short in the blistering heat.

"To bring back those kids no matter what." Genma reiterated.

"Exactly."

Genma watched on in silence as a thin sliver of wood worked its way beneath the boulders searching for a weak spot to exploit.

He understood what Tenzou was saying, he really did. After all, he had been in Kakashi's squad, too, and had been ingrained with the same fierce philosophy that anyone who _ever_ worked under Kakashi adhered to: "Never abandon your team. Teamwork is everything. The team comes first."

People who didn't seem to understand this concept never lasted long in Kakashi's team and often found themselves reassigned if not demoted within a week.

Kakashi the friend was good humored, lazy, dirty minded, and slightly reclusive.

Kakashi the ANBU captain was a terrifyingly efficient, inspiring _arsehole_.

But Kakashi the ANBU captain with a grudge against you? Well, it didn't really bear thinking about.

For all the teasing words and playful insults directed at an easy target like Tenzou, Genma really couldn't remember ever being in such a strong and disciplined unit as he had been serving under Kakashi and alongside Tenzou and Yugao.

Naruto and Sai were both members of Kakashi's team and both had worked with Tenzou in his non-ANBU capacity several times. Add into the mix that the Hokage herself cared deeply for the Kyuubi container and the fact that both boys were, after all, _Konoha_ shinobi made Genma, by proxy, a member of their team.

With a defeated sigh, he turned back to his friend and would-be-captain who had widened the wooden wedge considerably so that now it was about half a meter square and making slow, but steady progress down into the earth.

"Okay, what can I do to help?"

* * *

Running her hand across the prone girl's body, Sakura gently probed with the smallest amount of chakra she dared.

The patient's own chakra flared and tightened in response, its pure unhindered energy causing Sakura's chest to tighten.

She looked over to where Kakashi stood guarding the stairs.

"It's amazing." She murmured quietly. "It's like what it feels to be around Naruto when the Kyuubi has a hold on him."

"Hurry it up, Sakura."

She turned back to her work again, following the overloaded chakra pathways down to their source, a blisteringly hot area centred on the girl's hipbone.

"Oh Gods! Kakashi, the tattoo…it's a seal! It's as if it's wedging their chakra gates open! That's the source of all this energy! But it makes no sense, leaving even the smallest crack open in their chakra system would kill them." She heard a heavy noncommittal grunt behind her and rolled her eyes. "I know, I know _'hurry it up,'_ but it's like with Rock Lee's Reverse Lotus. If left open for too long it will literally eat them alive. These girls, all of them, will be dead inside six months even if they were already capable ninja. Assuming some of these girls are civilian with no developed chakra highways at all, they'll burn out in weeks if not days. It's fascinatingly cruel."

"Upsetting, isn't it? Unfortunately, with only a limited supply of girls at our disposal there really is no way to ensure all the girls make it past basic training."

Sakura spun around at the unfamiliar monotone of another man's voice.

There, standing over the prone form of her former sensei, stood the ANBU from the courtyard, his fingers curled around the hilt of a long katana.

Sakura barely had time to register the growing pool of blood around Kakashi's shock of silver hair before the mask appeared directly before her, crowding her vision and dominating her body space. She had barely even begun to identify the swimming feeling in her stomach as fear before the world folded in on itself once more.

*

_Ah! Bangs head against table. Hard chapter to write! thank you for all my reviews last chapter and for putting up with my short but fun torture of Iruka-sensei, I hope you all enjoyed this one. SlinkyM_


	14. Chapter 13: Part of the Equation

_Beta-ed by ShipperTrish_

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**Chapter 13:**_**Part of the Equation.**_

This was all starting to feel horribly familiar to Sakura as her mind slowly glued itself back together. Once again she was thrashing and kicking her way up through the murky depths of the indistinct towards the glistening surface of consciousness, and once again the vulnerable numbness in her limbs told her she was without the use of her chakra highway. With those coherent thoughts slotting firmly into place, she was _once again_ made aware that with consciousness came pain.

Her body was pressed against a cold and slightly damp surface and the rich smell of hay and manure seemed to cloud her senses. Although the chill seeping into her bones from the floor was unpleasant, its cold surface wasn't entirely unwelcomed, she thought as she pushed her hot, throbbing forehead against it.

Cracking an eye open, she took in her surroundings, instantly grateful for the dim lighting when her head only pounded gently in response to its intrusion.

The Copy Nin was slumped in a sitting position against a stone wall about eight feet from her, his arms shackled above his head on cast iron chains and a black canvas bag pulled snugly over his head.

Sakura knew it was him, though. An old, thick, white scar ran down from mid thigh and curved sharply around his knee cap.

About a year ago, when Team Kakashi had been on a simple escort mission to Suna, Kakashi had taken a kunai to the thigh. Sakura had been on hand to heal him after he had demonstrated single-handed how to eliminate five enemy ninja in a series of three flashy taijutsu moves. Unfortunately, he hadn't expected one of his own teammates to let loose a kunai just as he was coming out of a full roundhouse kick (Naruto had been inconsolable for hours).

When healing the luckily superficial wound, Sakura had noticed the larger, more impressive scar which, at its widest point, was the width of her index finger. The scar tissue was uneven and bumpy in places and the skin shiny where the wound had stretched during its healing. When she had asked what had caused it, he had simply shrugged and ruffled her hair, saying with complete seriousness "A Tiger." When she had ducked out of his aggressive molestation of her scalp, she had shot him her best "Haruno Sakura Disbelieving Glare" and told him that in no uncertain terms he was a liar. Infuriatingly, he had just given her a confused look and told her "Tigers are grumpy creatures."

It was so typically him, treating her like a child even though, at the time, she had just turned seventeen. She wondered if he'd ever stop looking at her like that.

Seeing her former sensei trussed up in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a tight, black tank top should have been something dreams were made of, dreams that were not at all _"_childish_"_ in nature, but all Sakura could focus on was the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the relief that flooded through her at the sight. She thought he was dead, she thought she was alone.

"Kakashi-sensei_…" _she whispered, surprised at the clarity of her voice in the quietness of their prison.

When she got no answer, she started to shift towards him until the tight bite against her wrists, ankles, and throat told her she wouldn't get very far. Looking down at her own restraints, she cursed out loud upon seeing the neatly engraved kanji on the surface of the smooth metal shackles. She felt around her neck, taking note of the thick metal collar and squirmed her fingers underneath it, searching frantically for some sort of release mechanism. It was as she expected, uniformly smooth and slightly warm to the touch: chakra repressing restraints. Well, that explained a lot.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she sighed with a huff, pounding her heavy ankles into the ground and kicking up flecks of muddy water.

"Language." Came the grumbling reply followed by a series of pained groans.

"Kakashi! You're awake!"

"Unfortunately." Another shift and another groan. "Where are we? And what is that awful smell? Smells like a farmyard in here."

Sakura lifted herself off the cold ground as much as she could, pulling tightly against the restraints that were, in her case, firmly bolted to the ground. At least they had allowed her limited use of her arms unlike Kakashi who didn't seem to have much manoeuvrability at all.

Finally managing to pull herself into a crouch, she studied her surroundings properly.

Her own medic apron and shoes had been removed as well as her gloves, but their captor had thankfully left her in her black skintight shorts and vest.

The ground beneath her was concrete, covered in a thin, wet layer of hay and mud.

The cell was brick with a metal front which was solid up until waist height and then barred all the way to the high ceiling.

Thick oak rafters were covered over with corrugated iron and the door to the cell seemed wider than normal and followed the same pattern of being solid at the bottom and barred at the top. It seemed to have double hinges indicating that the door could be opened in two halves. If Sakura craned her neck through the bars, there were other similar units of about the same twelve by twelve dimension opposite her, stretching as far as she could see.

"I think we're in some sort of stable for cattle or horses," she mused, rubbing at her irritated sinuses.

Kakashi grunted at that, the sound muffled by the mask and the cowl over his head.

"Are you hurt? You were bleeding. I thought…"

"My skull feels like its been cleaved in two, but I'll live."

"But all that blood…"

"Head wounds always bleed a lot. You know that. They seem to have patched me up properly. I can feel the stitches tugging."

"What happened?" she asked.

Kakashi was quiet for a long time before replying in a low, angry voice, "He just appeared behind me. It was so fast, even with the Sharingan uncovered I didn't see it coming. I didn't even _hear_ it coming. That's never happened to me before." He sounded irritated with himself and surprised.

The silence stretched for an impossibly long time, the low grumble of distant thunder being the only break in the monotony of waiting. What were they even waiting for? Help?

Help was a long way away, Sakura thought bitterly, once again tugging at her restraints. It was futile. The chains groaned an encouraging protest, but did no more than that.

They weren't due back in Konoha for another two days, maybe less, but from the overall darkness of the building, Sakura suspected they had only been there a couple of hours.

The jittery whinny of a horse echoed through the long building and then, as if in response, the rain started, pattering out a chaotic rhythm against the corrugated ceiling. It became almost deafening in its inconsistent persistence, each cracking drop against metal seemed like a hammer striking an anvil and every strike seemed to set Sakura's teeth on edge, driving a nail of worry and doubt deeper and deeper into her skull.

"Kakashi, what are they going to do to us?" She already had a good idea.

"Hmm…Probably torture us, try to find out how much we know, how many of us there are."

Sakura fell quiet at that. She had had her fair share of dangerous missions and life threatening situations, but torture? She'd had training of course, but knowing the human body as well as any other top class medical kunoichi, she also knew there was an infinite amount of ways to inflict pain both physical and psychological. Could she hold up against that? Would she let Kakashi down even more than she already had?

This mission had gone from bad to worse to downright horrendous. It had been a long time since she had felt this spectacularly defeated or this much of a liability. It seemed that in the last six days she had done nothing but screw up. Had it only been that long? Not even a week? And if they didn't get out of here? If she died here? Would Konoha be able to survive this? Kakashi said he had sent word to the Hokage to make preparations for an imminent attack, but they didn't know the extent of what her team had uncovered or what they were still _trying _to uncover.

It was suddenly too hot to breath. When had it gotten so hot in here? Surely the arrival of rain should have broken the stifling Taki humidity. It was so damn hot! She was starting to hyperventilate, her medic mind told her with an almost wry smile. Her fingers once again started to frantically dig at the collar around her neck.

"Sakura?"

She made a soft noise to indicate she was listening, too afraid to speak in case the words broke apart in her mouth. Her eyes were misting with tears that made her feel even more wretched. Why did she always have to cry? Why couldn't she stop panting? She gave the collar a final hard yank and then let her hands fall dejectedly to her sides. It was useless. She slumped back against the wall.

"I have completed four hundred and fourteen B-rank missions."

The statement came out of nowhere in the thick, familiar drawl she was used to hearing. Even when speaking in lazy, resigned monotone, his words rose well above the crackling patter of the rain.

Unable to see her reaction, he carried on. "I've also completed two hundred and ninety-eight A-rank missions." He said it all with a tone of bored nonchalance and she was sure that if she could see his normally visible gray eye, it would be hooded and indifferent. Was he actually boasting? At a time like this? Her chest felt so tight…

"I've also completed forty-two S-rank missions."

The guy was insufferably arrogant sometimes!

"That's nice, Kakashi," she ground out between her teeth, supporting herself on her elbows.

"And that's not including the hundreds of C-rank and D-rank missions or the ones that 'never happened.' I've done seventy-six of those."

Her eyebrow twitched just slightly.

"In total, I've completed one-thousand, two-hundred and seventeen missions successfully. Granted some of them were completed outside given mission parameters and granted some of them involved accidental casualties, but overall, I think a one hundred percent success rate is pretty good if I do say so myself."

He was just being cocky now…

"Well, Kakashi, you might have to make that a ninety-nine point ninety-two percent success rate," she hissed.

He allowed himself a private grin. "Maybe. Do you want to know something else?"

A pained sigh.

"I've been captured twenty-three times by the enemy and tortured on fifteen of those occasions."

Noting her silence, Kakashi shifted so that his arms were allowed a little slack. He rolled his head across his shoulders, sighing appreciatively as the bones in his neck and spine popped, releasing the tension from being in one position for who knows how long. In a voice that clearly transmitted complete relaxation, he continued once more.

"In all fifteen cases, the torture was brutal, soul destroying, and seemed unrelenting. On one mission when I was eighteen, I was held captive for nine weeks and everyday without fail I would be 'interrogated' until I passed out with pain or blood loss. Konoha had just about given me up for dead. Only the fact that we were in a time of war prevented them from adding my name to the cenotaph: there were too many confirmed casualties and ninjas considered M.I.A were pushed to the bottom of the list. There are, as you well know, thousands of ways to inflict pain: hot, cold, blunt, sharp, physical, mental…Every form has a binary opposite, equal in effectiveness. Then, you have the senses: touch, taste, sound, smell...They can be all turned against you with the right approach. You could take every class the T & I have to offer and still your enemy will most probably find a way to get to you."

"Why are you even telling me all this?!" Sakura practically shouted, her anger bubbling to the surface. Her chains gave a protesting squeak when the links ground together as she strained towards him. "Did that ANBU hit you a little too hard on the head or something?!"

His head snapped straight towards her, his body language no longer lazy and relaxed, but rather sharp and focused. She knew that despite the black canvas covering his head, he was looking straight at her. His voice when he spoke was clear and strong, just like it was on the battlefield.

"Fifteen times I remained silent, fifteen times I recovered from the experience, fifteen times I made it back home. We _will_ get out of here. We _will _complete our mission."

Sakura could only nod dumbly as her body relaxed. He was right. Suddenly, the fear and apprehension that had been boiling in her blood since the word "torture" had first entered her brain melted away and a blanket of heavy calm settled across her shoulders. She could do this, she really could.

"Thanks, Kakashi."

"No problem." He muttered, sagging back into the wall. "I just need to come up with a plan."

* * *

Tsunade stared down at the traitorous little piece of card gripped firmly between her well manicured fingertips, a trench-like scowl marring her ageless face. With a deep sigh, she opened the cabinet beneath her large oak desk and withdrew a saké bottle, not bothering to take out the small china cups that accompanied it. Uncapping the bottle, she tipped it up and let the warm strong taste flood her mouth. Swallowing it with only a slight grimace, she sat the bottle on her desk and began scribbling down instructions on the open scroll in front of her.

"Shizune!" she yelled in her clear, strong voice.

The petite, dark haired assistant appeared almost instantly, clutching a sleeping Tonton tightly to her chest.

"Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"Get me Umino Iruka. Now!" She shouted, slamming her hand on the desk and subsequently sending the bottle of saké smashing onto the floor. Tsunade let out a low growl of frustration and pinched the bridge of her nose viciously before turning on her heel and striding towards the door.

"Y-yes, Hokage-sama! W-where are you going?"

"To buy some more saké." The door slammed behind her, rattling heavily on its brass hinges.

Shizune watched after her with a look of shock and concern.

_This couldn't be good…_

Walking over towards the desk intent on cleaning up the mess before Tsunade got back, her eye caught the small piece of card that had fluttered to the floor. The silver surface of the lottery card had been scratched away to reveal three matching symbols corresponding to a jackpot of twenty million yen. Shizune sighed dejectedly and walked with hurried steps to track down a certain desk chuunin.

_This couldn't be good at all…_

_

* * *

  
_

Kakashi's body stiffened long before a shadow flickered across the dim light source, his muscles tense and tight before Sakura had even heard the faint sound of approaching footfalls. How he had sensed another presence over the clamoring sound of the rain and the invasive smell of the farm animals Sakura couldn't be sure, but at the sight of his body preparing for action, she felt herself drawing up into the most defensible position she could manage within the confines of her restraints.

The sound of a key being turned and the long drawn out whine of the door grating against the dirty cement flooring had both Sakura and Kakashi eying their portal to freedom with eager expressions, albeit one unseeingly.

A tall, lean ninja strode into the cell, keeping a safe distance away from the two prisoners. He was dressed in a standard Taki jounin uniform and seemed a little skittish and nervous. Sakura didn't know if it was because of them or something else entirely. Hesitantly, he placed a bowl of water down on the cell floor and then turned back towards the exit.

"How do we know that it isn't poisoned?" Sakura asked with heavy suspicion.

The tall, dark haired ninja turned back towards them and gave her a look of almost surprise, the expression sitting comically upon his slightly too broad face. Coughing into his hand lightly, he spoke up with a clear, rich voice.

"It's only rain water, I can assure you," he replied pleasantly, shifting from foot to foot.

"How much longer are you planning on keeping us here?"

"You'll have to ask Kuma-san," he said and once again turned towards the exit.

Finally, in a calm and pleasant voice Kakashi asked, "Could you at least remove my hood and mask? I'm afraid I can't drink without assistance."

Again, the ninja looked around almost nervously, once again shifting from foot to foot.

"I really can't do that," he murmured almost apologetically.

"I won't try anything." Kakashi half stood and pulled against his chains. Kenta's hand immediately darted to his kunai pouch and he dropped back into a defensive posture. "See, I can't move any further than this." A sharp tug against the chains. "I can't use my chakra. All I'm asking for is for you to remove what's covering my face so that I can drink and at least see what I'm doing," the Copy Nin stated reasonably, moving back into an unthreatening seated position.

The dark haired ninja thought long and hard until he finally started backing away.

"What's your name?" Sakura suddenly asked, flashing him what she hoped was an appealing friendly smile to cover her growing frustration. They needed those keys…

"Kenta." The ninja spoke up immediately, taking a hard, scrutinizing glare at her face, searching her features for deceit.

"Well, Kenta, my partner had a very nasty bump to the head and lost a lot of blood. It's important to keep your fluids up after an accident like that, hm?" she kept her voice sweet and light.

For a second she was sure he was just going to turn and leave again with his eyes darting between her, Kakashi, and the wide open cell door. In one last attempt, she pulled on her best puppy dog eyes and forced as much sincerity into her voice as possible. "Please, Kenta-san?"

He took one hesitant step forward and then another until he was within reaching distance of the Copy Nin. Reaching out a hand to bridge the distance between them, he gently hooked his fingers underneath the coarse fabric of the hood and paused, staring at Kakashi uncertainly.

"I promise to not even move." Kakashi said, struggling to keep the smile out of his voice.

Kenta nodded and Sakura quietly released a breath she'd been holding.

The material lifted up at an infuriatingly slow pace, revealing the Copy Nin inch by inch:

The tight contours of Kakashi's black mask...

The strong line of his nose...

Pale skin over high, defined cheekbones..

The shadow of thick eyelashes...

And to Sakura's line of sight, lower down on the floor, the smallest sliver of swirling contorting red.

It was a strange sensation. It made no sound, only gave the brief feeling of being tugged. The walls of the cell seemed to bend with anticipation, flexing and contracting for a split second and then suddenly there was another hand, a gloved hand, griped tightly around Kenta's wrist, effectively stopping his progress. The grip tightened further and there was a muffled crunch followed by a shrill cry. The material fell down over Kakashi's face as Kenta fell down heavily on his knees, clutching his broken wrist and grinding his teeth hard through the pain.

"Kenta, that was nearly a costly mistake," came the smooth baritone. It was a strange voice, velvety and deep, yet devoid of inflection. A beautiful, but expressionless face popped into Sakura's head without permission and she hastily beat down the thought. This man was not Sai. He was entirely more terrifying then Sai had ever been.

"P-please forgive me, Kuma-san. It won't happen again." Kenta mumbled, the pain evident in his voice.

Kuma nodded, a movement that was barely perceptible behind the mask. The dark eyeholes seemed to shift to Sakura for a brief moment until settling back on Kakashi.

"We're going to talk now, Hatake-san."

She heard Kakashi's low growl of defiance and then Kuma's hand slapped onto Kakashi's shoulder and both of them disappeared from the room without a trace. There was no smoke, no flashy display of leaves, just an odd, aching feeling of emptiness and the silence broken only by the persistent pattering of rain on the roof and the pained ragged breathing of the man on the floor.

"Kenta? Where has he taken him?" Sakura asked shakily, her eyes wide and confused.

"To be interrogated." Kenta sighed, rolling onto his back.

Sakura drew her knees close to her chest and stared at where Kakashi's chains now hung limply.

"Why are you so scared of him? Don't you realize you're committing treason by working for that turncoat?" she whispered.

"They have my daughter."

Her face dropped into a horrified expression, but Kenta refused to look at her and gradually got to his feet. He left the cell without another word, pulling the door shut and relocking it.

"Help us," she whispered. "We can help her. We can get her out of here."

She knew he had heard her, but he said nothing and gradually the ever persistent rain drowned out the sound of his feet shuffling away.

"Coward." she muttered.

* * *

Iruka stood before the Hokage feeling rather awkward and unsure of what to do.

She was sitting in a rather unladylike position _on_ her desk taking long, loud gulps from a saké bottle. She hadn't even bothered with a cup.

He had been standing there for a good few minutes before he had decided that maybe, even though he was standing right in front of her, he should alert her to his presence.

He cleared his throat into his hand in an _oh so_ subtle attempt to gain her attention.

She continued swigging.

He tried again. "Eh-hurm!"

She took another long swig, seeming to pause to read the label on the bottle upside down.

"Eh-Eh-HURM!"

"For God's sake, boy! I can see you're here!" she yelled, scowling at him and dribbling a little saké into her enormous cleavage.

Iruka blushed and looked at his feet as she dabbed furiously at her chest with the sleeve of her yukata.

She seemed to then shrug before downing the rest of the bottle in one go. After making a long, satisfied noise through her nose, she finally turned to Iruka.

"I have a mission for you, 'Ruka-kun."

He frowned at the nickname and then frowned deeper at the strange, flirty tone of voice she was using. The woman was like a seesaw: _Up. Down. Up. Down._

Stepping forward, he took the scroll she was holding out for him and unfurled it, quickly skimming through its contents. His eyes widened, then practically bulged out his head.

"H-hokage-sama, this is going to take days!" he spluttered.

"No, it's not," she sang, kicking her heels back and forth under the table.

"B-but..."

"It's going to take two days at the most," she commented merrily.

"Hokage-sama," Iruka started, trying to maintain a polite tone. "Even with the help of the ninja you have listed, an operation of this magnitude would take us the better part of a week! The rations would need to be prepared and ordered and even though Kotetsu, Izumo, and I are completely capable-"

"ENOUGH!" she shouted, slamming her palm down on the desk. The contents littering its surface shuddered, but did not fall down.

_That was one well made desk!_ Iruka noticed with longing.

"Please forgive me, Hokage-sama." he said bowing low in apology.

"You can use the pre-genin classes to help you, but I need all my jounin available to fight if necessary. We have a threat fast approaching. We need to be prepared."

Iruka nodded, knowing how important his task was. He bowed again, turning towards the door.

"Oh, and Ruka-ru-ru?" she asked with a giggle.

He felt a horrified shudder ripple up his spinal cord.

"Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"If you manage this in one day, I'll buy you a new desk," she said smiling and rubbed her knuckles against her desk's well polished surface.

Suddenly filled with a new lease on life, Iruka strode from the room.

_A new desk!_

A Hokage-proof, hopefully dog-proof, beautiful new desk! Surely he'd be able to evacuate the village's civilian population in twenty-four hours, right? Organize the sleeping and living quarters hidden deep within the depths of the Hokage Mountain, right? Find enough ration supplies to feed almost six thousand people, right?! That desk would be _so_ his! As he turned into the corridor, he heard the telltale sound of a saké bottle being uncorked followed by the Hokage's menacing laughter. This was going to be a long night.

* * *

The grain of rough wood under his palms was all the anchor he needed. When he had that, he didn't need his sight, so despite the claustrophobic confines of the dark hood and the rigid seated position he was strapped in, Kakashi remained calm, his breathing elevated only slightly above normal. It happened again and he forced his focus to deepen so that all that remained was himself and the texture under his hands. It was a reassuring constant against the intense screwdriving pain in his fingertips.

Another senbon slipped under the nail of his right index finger, its sharp, metal tip burning a tunnel through the soft, sensitive flesh. He heard himself hiss and felt his body's natural response of trying to pull away kick in again, but he pushed those distractions down, breathing out deeply and expelling the energy. The trick was to accept the pain. Once you stopped fighting it and just accepted its existence, it became background noise. It still hurt, it was still excruciating, but a decade serving in ANBU taught you how to compartmentalize these things. The man with the needles was ANBU, though, and knew as well as Kakashi did that everyone had limits. You can't keep up that kind of focus forever.

Another senbon and warm, reassuring wood.

"Hatake-san, where are the other members of your team?"

Senbon. Silence.

"Hatake-san, is the Hokage aware of our plans?"

Senbon. A thin trail of sweat sliding down his face from underneath the stifling confines of the hood.

"Hatake-san, how much do you know of our plans against Konoha?"

Another senbon slipped slowly, slowly, _slowly_ into the middle finger of his left hand and Kakashi grunted, biting down on the soft flesh of his bottom lip, trying to redirect his focus.

"Hatake-san, if you tell me-"

"Is this the part where you tell me all the pain will end if I just tell you what you need to know?" Kakashi said, keeping his voice as bored as possible although the rasping sound of his breathing negated some of the effect in his opinion.

Kuma cocked his head to the side although Kakashi couldn't see the gesture. "Yes."

"Well, save me the cliché bullshit. I won't answer any of your questions."

"Hatake-san, clichés are clichés because they work."

Another senbon and a new finger. Another pained groan, slightly louder than before.

"Hatake-san, where are your teammates?"

"This again?"

"Where are they, Hatake-san?"

Fiery pain shot through his right hand as the multiple senbons wedged in the soft nail beds were wiggled up and down at an agonizingly slow pace. Kakashi pushed his palms as hard as possible into the wooden arms of the chair he was strapped to, but was unable to claw back the anchoring focus he had been holding onto. When the process was repeated on the other hand, his control slipped and he screamed, the wooden arms splintering underneath him.

_Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale._ His shallow, uneven breathing seemed to dominate the dark space all around him.

"Hatake-san, if you don't cooperate I will have to bring in your partner."

The slightest stiffening of Kakashi's shoulders was all Kuma needed to continue.

"How do you think she will hold up against this treatment?"

Silence. A senbon was ripped out with alarming quickness.

"She's stronger than you give her credit for." Kakashi bit out around the pain.

"I'm sure anyone deserving to be the Hokage's apprentice is indeed strong, but how strong? She's young and inexperienced. A little girl ruled by emotion."

"She'll be fine." Kakashi replied flatly.

"My methods of getting what I need from her won't be as pleasant as this if you resist."

Kakashi could feel himself hesitating. It wasn't the first time a teammate had been used against him like this and probably wouldn't be the last, but Sakura? He gulped, trying to swallow back the words in his mouth. He couldn't tell this man anything.

"I'm sorry, Hatake-san. I'll take you back to your cell now."

"You're not sorry! You don't understand the concept of the word!" Kakashi spat.

All of the senbon were at once wrenched from Kakashi's fingertips and Kakashi screamed, unable to control it.

Kuma cocked his head to the side, considering the Copy Nin's words.

"No, you're right. I don't." Kuma replied.

* * *

*

_AN: Thanks for last chapters reviews guys! …is everyone still with me? Eh? Also thanks to new readers, new alert's and new favourites._


	15. Chapter 14: Remember Me

_Sorry for the monstrous delay, there were summer fancy dress parties then the visitation of my evil family and then the rewriting of this whole chapter! Thanks to the reviewers of the last chappy, you guys are awesome. Beta-ed by my dear __**ShipperTrish**__. Anyway enjoy (I hope!)_

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* * *

  
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**Chapter 14: **_**Remember Me.**_

The sound of footsteps echoed around the large stables as Kakashi was guided on unsteady feet back towards his and Sakura's makeshift prison. It was irritating how his feet dragged slightly, how he couldn't seem to keep his head from lolling as firm hands kept him upright. The rattling rasp of the chains linking his wrists to his ankles seemed like a mocking chorus, the restraints further hampering any chance of appearing like the graceful and deadly shinobi he was. He focused all his attention on the difficult task of putting one foot in front of the other.

His escort seemed patient enough, whispering quiet instructions when he needed to be navigated around various obstacles or when he had to traverse a wide grating in the floor.

He recognized the voice as belonging to Kenta, the Waterfall nin who he had nearly taken out in the cell only hours before.

Kakashi heard Sakura's gasp as the door was unbolted and instinctively curled his hands into loose fists to hide the worst of the damage from her. It was a futile gesture. He could feel the sticky wetness of his blood running in rivulets down his palms and wrists although, thankfully, his fingers themselves felt largely numb with a hot swelling kind of heat. He was exhausted, though.

As Kenta guided him into a sitting position on the cold, concrete floor, locking the chains at his ankles back onto the hook on the wall, Sakura's voice rang out with calm self assurance and an audible edge of anger.

"You can't just leave him like that."

Kakashi was proud of her, expecting her to be shaken and emotional. He must have looked terrible, but instead, she sounded strong and unmovable.

He heard a rustle as Kenta shifted on the balls of his feet.

"A shinobi is largely useless without his hands. Those wounds need to be dressed and cleaned." Sakura continued.

There was a long moment of silence and Kakashi could almost feel Kenta shrinking under Sakura's ice cold glare.

After several long seconds, there was the sound of a bottle being uncapped, the telltale sound of water sloshing, and then a cold, wet wad of fabric was placed gently in Kakashi's shaking hands.

Kakashi tried his best to grip at the fabric, but after several failed attempts, he settled on placing it on his lap and burying his burning fingers into the cooling mass, sighing slightly as the burning sensation lessened.

Kenta finally spoke up.

"That's the most that I can do for him, you understand? I'll leave the water here…" he said, nudging Kakashi's leg with the canteen so that he understood it was within reaching distance. "And I'll leave his arms out of the wall shackles so that blood flow can return properly to his hands, but that's all I can do."

Sakura's whispered "thank you" went unanswered and soon they were once again left alone.

* * *

The persistent thump of a fist against hardwood, jarring and inescapable, reverberated around Kotetsu's skull as he tried to push his head further under the pillow, the sound drilling a rhythmic, bass beat through his patience. Elbowing his bedfellow hard in the ribs, he mumbled out something which translated loosely as "It's your turn to get the door."

Instead, said bedfellow ignored this request and snuggled closer against his back, looping a well muscled arm tightly across his abdomen and replied with an equally unintelligible groan, "Just ignore it and maybe they'll go away" before slipping back into sleep with a gentle snort.

Kotetsu sighed and jammed the pillow tightly around his ears as the noise relentlessly continued. Unfortunately for him, their harasser was well schooled in making himself impossible to ignore, especially to the honed senses of a ninja.

Soon the rhythm of knocks shifted, carefully spelling out messages in Morse code against the doorframe:

**'G-e-t . u-p . y-o-u . l-a-z-y . b-a-s-t-a-r-d-s.'**

Kotetsu sat bolt upright, the thin summer top-sheet falling low around his hips.

"Kotetsu, pleeasse lay down!" came a childish whine from his side followed by a palm slapping across his chest and pushing him back against the mattress. Sighing, Kotetsu sunk back and screwed his eyes tightly closed.

'**K-o-t-e-t-s-u . o-p-e-n . t-h-e . d-o-o-r.'**

Kotetsu growled, running an aggravated hand through his hair.

'**K-o-t-e-t-s-u . h-a-s . a . h-a-i-r-y . b-a-c-k.'**

Another low growl.

'**K-o-t-e-t-s-u . l-i-k-e-s . t-o . b-o-t-t-o-m.'**

A shocked snort and the sound of light chuckling from the warm body next to him.

"I do not!" he hissed angrily at his companion.

"Go tell that to him," came the amused reply.

"Him?"

"Only Iruka would be this sadistic. Why don't you go see what he wants?" his partner giggled.

'**K-O-T-E-T-S-U . I-S . A . P-A-N-S-Y!'** came the deafening thumps.

"Okay, okay, OKAY!" Kotetsu bellowed at the door, jerking the top sheet awkwardly around his waist and dragging his sleep deprived body towards the front door of his apartment.

Izumo made a half ass attempt to grab the corner of the fast departing sheet, failed, sighed, and then made a half ass effort to find a pair of pants amongst the chaotic mess that was his lover's bedroom floor.

Wrenching the door open with more force than necessary, Kotetsu glared with all his might at the innocent looking chocolate eyes of one Umino Iruka.

"CAN I HELP YOU?!"

"Good morning, Kotetsu-kun," smiled Iruka cheerfully while wiping the rain of spittle off of his face.

"MORNING?! DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?!"

"A little after three."

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT AT THREE IN THE FU-"

"Hey, Iruka, wassup?" Izumo said with a sleepy smile as he appeared behind his screaming other half and clamped a hand tightly over his mouth.

"Hey, 'Zu. We've been given the order to evacuate the civilian population to the Hokage Mountain complex. I know it's early, but I'd like to get started right away. I still have all the pre-genins to round up." Iruka said, keeping his eyes locked firmly with Izumo's as Kotetsu's sheet slipped down his hips and onto the floor.

Kotetsu swore softly under the hand covering his mouth, but made no move to cover himself.

"Pre-genins are going to love being pulled from their beds a little past three in the morning on a _weekend, _Iruka," he said, removing Izumo's hand from his mouth and placing his own firmly on his naked hips.

"They'll have to get used to early starts and responding to crises if they want to become real shinobi." Iruka said with a heavy blush as he tried to look anywhere but at the junk jiggling in front of him. Coughing lightly into his hand, he turned and pulled out two laminated timetables complete with colour coded pie charts and presented them to his fellow chuunin.

"This is the itinerary for the next twenty hours. As you can see, I've divided everything into two hour slots as well as which of the pre-genin and off-mission genin will be most suited for the work. Izumo, I have you in charge of rationing and inventory. Kotetsu, I have you down for evacuating districts five through nine. I will be evacuating one through four and the commercial districts. Any questions?"

"Iruka…" Izumo said, gawping at the beautifully presented mission plan, "This is jounin level planning."

"There's a lot at stake!" Iruka said, flames of determination bursting behind his retinas, his fist raised in a manner that reminded both chuunin of one of the more exuberant personalities often seen dancing through the mission room. "The safety of our beloved village hangs in the balance!"

Both other chuunin tried to smother the horrified shudders running down their spines at the sudden and uncanny likeness.

"Okay, Iruka-kun." Kotetsu said, shrinking back slightly. "We'll do our best, but to do all of this in twenty hours…Well, it's not going to be easy, is it?"

Iruka's hands were suddenly grasping Kotetsu's bare shoulders, their faces nose to nose as his tirade continued, his early embarrassment of Kotetsu's unabashed nakedness forgotten as he practically bear hugged the man in his desperation.

"We can do it! If we work as a team we can overcome anything! We can-"

"Alright, alright!" both chuunin shrieked in unison. "We'll be out in five minutes!"

Panting behind the now closed door, Kotetsu wiped nervous sweat from his brow.

"Well that was terrifying!"

Izumo only nodded numbly.

"Do you think Gai has been giving him lessons? I mean, all that was missing was a burning sunset."

Izumo spoke up in a weak voice. "Do you think the pressure has finally got to him? The screaming children, the long mission room hours, the long mission room hours dealing with men who act like children?"

"Nah…" Kotetsu said, thoughtfully scratching a long finger against his chin. "Only one thing in this world would get Iruka so excited-"

"Ahhh…Desk fetish."

* * *

Hiroto Nakamizu looked longingly into the stable at the pink haired medic who was meeting his gaze with a look of fixed disgust. His large fingers curled tightly around the metal bars as he openly studied her long, slender legs, defined abdomen, and small, perky bosom. He hoped that she looked as glorious naked as she did with a mud smeared face and chains holding her firmly in place. He licked his fleshy lips in anticipation, the movement causing his jowls and second chin to wobble.

The girl's top lip curled up further, revealing straight, even, white teeth and her green, almond shaped eyes flashed with a vehemence not lost on Hiroto. This little girl wanted to gut him like a fish. It was written all over her face, promising a good fight.

He loved it when they were feisty.

"I can't wait to see if the collar matches the cuffs," he said, his grin widening and another chin appearing.

"Try it. I'll gut you like a fish!" Sakura snapped.

When her hands fisted and started shaking with outrage, Hiroto's pants tightened uncomfortably at the sight.

He chuckled, a wet, raspy sound and licked his lips again.

"You're a neutered kitten in that state. Now I'm sure that in a fair fight you could pull my head off from my shoulders…ninja." he added with a disapproving shake of his head. "But with that thing around your neck…" he gestured with a chubby finger to the thick metal collar fitted snugly to her throat, "You're just another wilful little lady who needs educating. When Kuma's finished with you, that's exactly what I'll do...Educate you."

"What with? Do you even have a dick?" she asked, cocking her head to the side and channelling as much of Sai into her remark as possible.

With a shriek of outrage, Hiroto wrenched the door open, the keys jangling violently in the lock.

"How dare you, you little bitch!" he screamed, striding over to her and fisting a hand into her hair.

Sakura was pulled onto her knees, as far as the chains allowed. The resounding _smack_ across her face had stars bursting around her vision.

His other hand grasped her by the jaw, thick digits digging hard into the soft flesh of her cheeks. "Maybe I'll just fuck you here in the mud and dirt like the dirty little wanton whore you are!" he screamed in her face, his grip tightening painfully as Sakura struggled to break free, her arms straining against the chains to push his mass away from her.

"Don't touch her." came the deep, flat voice from the shrouded figure in the corner.

Hiroto's dismissive laughter was the only reply as his spade-like hands thrust roughly under Sakura's top, mauling her breasts with hard, painful squeezes.

Sakura hissed angrily, twisting her torso away from him, bucking her body hard to shake his vice-like grip, but he continued, pulling and yanking at her bindings, laughing manically at her renewed efforts and pleading whimpers.

Kakashi, covered in darkness, could only listen to his former student's sounds of distress. When he heard the sound of fabric ripping, a cloud of anger settled over him so dark and turbulent that he even _heard_ Hiroto's heart rate stutter in response.

The bloated idiot, responding to the waves of killing intent, made the mistake of loosening his hold on Sakura, enough for her to slam her knees up into his jaw, causing him to fall sharply on his side on the concrete floor.

That was all Kakashi needed.

"Do you think I'm a neutered kitten, Nakamizu-san?"

With his arms no longer restricted to being held above his head, the Copy Nin lunged forward, catching the velvety fabric of Hiroto's long robe between bloodied fingers. With one sharp tug, the man was pitched towards him as he tried to stand. In a movement so fluid that Sakura, struggling to cover herself in the corner, didn't even see it until Kakashi had his knees locked firmly around Hiroto's head and the chain wrapped around his large neck.

With brutal strength born out of the need to protect his teammate from what Kakashi considered the most horrific form of abuse, the Copy Nin threaded the fingers of both of his hands into one, large, closed fist and beat down hard and heavy into the soft, weak flesh of his victim.

Sakura looked on in horror as Kakashi's arms came down again and again.

Gargled, choking sounds and a fine mist of blood and spittle rained upward as in one blow Hiroto's nose was broken, and in the next his lip split, and in the next his jaw dislocated. Blood and clear fluid foamed and frothed around the civilian's mouth and with each wet blow of tissue and bone, the Copy Nin's rasping voice could be heard barely more than a whisper saying, _"Don't touch her" _over and over again.

The kick to Kakashi's chest landed him hard against the stone wall as Kuma seemed to appear once again from out of nowhere, but even while panting and clutching at what was sure to be a couple of broken ribs, the red haze of blood lust did not lift.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kakashi realized that he had not felt such an intense urge to kill for a very, very long time, since the time when he had been the mirror image of the quiet, strong figure now looming over him, hiding behind an animal guise and a formfitting uniform.

"That's enough, Hatake-san." Kuma's deep baritone cut through the snorting gurgle of Hiroto's laboured breathing and the sound of Kakashi's own breath coming in short, sharp gasps behind the hood of dark fabric.

"Kenta, are you responsible for this?" Kuma asked, inclining his masked head to the side.

Kenta stepped slowly into the available light, his wide, shocked eyes fixed on the bloody pulp at his feet.

"Y-yes, Kuma-san," the man gulped, looking between the tense quivering form of Kakashi, the silent, shocked, and huddled form of Sakura, and the mess of a man who seemed to have no face.

Kuma nodded once before addressing the prone man on the ground.

"Hiroto, I'm afraid you're in no condition to be having any more fun with Haruno-san and now I have better plans for her. I'll find you a replacement when you're feeling better," he said without emotion or concern, ignoring the way the man clutched weakly at the hem of his trousers.

"Kenta, secure Hatake's arm restraints and then take Hiroto to the infirmary."

Kakashi's almost hysterical laughter bubbled out from his mouth before he could control it as Kenta gingerly manoeuvred his arms up and into the more secure shackles. The laughter stopped abruptly and he spoke with what Sakura recognized as his "teacher voice," calm and direct, as if relaying a tedious synopsis on chakra application.

"Nakamizu-kun will be eating through a straw for the rest of his life."

Kenta shuddered as he stepped away and carefully pulled Hiroto to his feet, supporting all of the gargantuan weight as he took the now unconscious man with him.

"Probably, but you'll be dead within hours and the teammate you're so hell-bent on protecting will enter Konoha as my most prized weapon, ready and willing to cut every Leaf-loyal throat she comes across. I think I'll have her kill you as a dummy run."

His hand slapped down on Sakura's shoulder and the room bent in a familiar way before Kuma vanished, taking his student with him.

Kakashi was left in darkness, pain radiating through his hands and chest with the intense weight of fear pressing down.

* * *

Teleportation at its core was nothing more than a flashy parlour trick. On the battlefield it served almost no purpose because it required a complete and intimate knowledge of one's surroundings down to the last cubic millimetre.

Sakura had always known this, being an avid learner and a keen student, but she had also always been enamoured with Kakashi's ability to _poof_ his way effortlessly through the winding streets of Konoha. For his own amusement, Sakura had often witnessed him _poof _directly into the Hokage's office upon being summoned in an attempt to startle Tsunade and cause her to spill saké down her front, which almost always resulted in her launching a paperweight at his head and him trying to hide a chuckle behind a cough.

When Sakura had asked him to teach her the jutsu, Kakashi had been more than happy to oblige, citing her unique chakra control as a characteristic important for mastering the technique.

"_It requires only focus and two weeks hard work at the most,"_ he had said.

Kakashi had explained that to make things easier, it was important to have an anchor, an object infused with the user's chakra that would be used as a constant, or rather, a homing beacon from which to orientate one's travel.

All this theory Sakura gleefully gobbled up and immediately set to work sealing her own anchor, a decorative summer kimono that had been her grandmother's. It hung in a glass case on the wall of her tiny little apartment, its fading silk and embroidered chrysanthemums now imbued with her own cool energy.

This was the only stage that had been even remotely successful.

Her first teleportation had been in tandem with Kakashi. She had been aiming to transport them from one side of Training Ground Three to the other. Sure enough, after completing the two-part hand seal, they had found themselves on the other side…only twenty feet up in the air. Being a medic was brilliantly useful when you seemed to develop a penchant for breaking your team leader's ankles.

The teleportation itself was impossible to get used to. As soon as the hand seal was completed, it felt like you were being pulled through a tunnel by your teeth. The world seemed to shift and spasm, sliding into a myriad of cool blue contours, each person in the village lit up like a blue, flickering candle and the brightest of all was the shape of a kimono burning a mile away in her fourth floor apartment.

Sakura had felt Kakashi's presence steering her away from it and knew immediately that the point of this exercise was to use her anchor as a way to get one's bearings, not try and travel directly to it. Hence, why their re-emergence had found them twenty feet up in the air and Sakura clawing blindly into space.

That wasn't the worst of it, though. The after-effects were horrendous.

Over the next couple of months, she had tried and tried and tried again, to the point where she would use the technique to travel home after her shift at the hospital every single day, a short journey she knew well and left little chance of her accidentally re-emerging in a wall.

Once, after a group of interns that had been shadowing her all day had asked if she wanted to come for an after work drink, Sakura had replied that unfortunately, she had training to do and had spun on the spot, disappearing in a shower of beautiful pink petals. The interns had _oo-ed_ and _ah-ed_ at the dramatic display, spreading word quickly throughout the hospital that _their_ mentor was by far the coolest, something that would have been negated had they seen her land unceremoniously on her arse on the cold, tiled floor of her bathroom and then promptly scoot over to the toilet to empty the contents of her stomach.

Sakura didn't like to be defeated, but after two solid months of flailing limbs and unbearable stomach pains, she had finally conceded and told Kakashi to _poof_-off when he had come to check on her progress.

Kuma's teleportation felt nothing like this...It was worse.

One second she had been staring at the half crazed form of her team leader and the next she was hurtling through complete blackness at an incredible speed. There were no blue flares of chakra lighting the way, no brightly burning summer kimonos to allow her an understanding of her surroundings, and when she popped back into existence beside the tall, lean ANBU, it felt nothing like being pulled through a tunnel by her teeth and more like being turned inside out. Her knees hit hard flooring and her stomach rolled violently, leaving her dry retching against cold tiles. She was brought back to awareness by a sharp prick of pain to the nape of her neck.

"Shit!" she screamed, slapping a hand around to the back of her neck, realizing in horror that she had been drugged as cold liquid spread out in her head. "What the hell did you do?!" she gasped as Kuma unhinged the chakra repressing collar and shackles around her wrists and ankles. Staggering uncertainly, she forced herself across the room away from him, whirling around to stare apprehensively at her attacker.

"I injected you with a substance to stop you putting up too much of a fight. We need to access your chakra highway for this procedure to work." Kuma said, holding up a small vial for her to see.

"Vecuronium Bromide?" she whispered, giving him a questioning look as she silently tried to gain control of her newly awakened chakra highway and breakdown the compound coursing through her body.

"You are a medic, are you not? One of the most promising in Konoha?"

Numbly, Sakura started reciting in perfect textbook fashion: "Vecuronium Bromide is a muscle relaxant and paralyzing agent used alongside anaesthesia in surgery. It works by blocking the cholinergic receptors and thus, inhibiting motor function."

"Very good. Complete paralysis, but full consciousness."

"What are you going to do?" she gasped. Her legs were starting to feel numb and heavy. She staggered backwards further, reaching out awkwardly to support herself on a gurney. The compound was working too fast for her to isolate it, the best she could do was slow it down.

A hospital?

Looking around, automatically searching for possible exits, Sakura noticed only one door. The room was clean, clinical white, smaller, but similar to the room she and Kakashi had been caught in. Monitors were set up in the corners, tables of surgical implements lay on glass tables in metal trays. She stumbled towards one, leaning heavily on the smooth surface and picked up a scalpel with clumsy fingers.

"You bastard!" she shouted, brandishing it in front of her. "When the Hokage finds out what you're planning, she will obliterate you and Danzo! By touching me or any other Leaf shinobi, you'll be signing away your life!" she lunged forward towards him, but he side-stepped neatly, allowing her to hurtle into the wall. The scalpel dropped from now lifeless fingers and Sakura could only look at her useless hands with panic and frustration.

The mask cocked to the side and seemed to clearly articulate the ANBU's confusion.

"Danzo has nothing to do with this. I'm acting on my own volition," he said simply.

Sakura felt her own face contort into a muddy mask of shock and confusion.

"W-what do you mean? Danzo had us followed! He has to know what's going on! He has to have people letting the girls into our territory!"

"I'm sure he's more or less aware of my plan, but he wasn't part of it. His involvement would be political suicide. This was simply what I theorized to be the best course of action to achieve his goals, but even Danzo would frown upon this as treason."

"Then why do it?" Sakura asked incredulously. "You are _supposed_ to blindly follow orders. You aren't supposed to be able to think freely!"

"My orders have always been to facilitate Danzo's inevitable rise to Hokage. I'm completing my mission by working outside of the given perimeters. I will complete my mission no matter what."

"Sounds like a glitch in the programming to me." Sakura sneered, her legs slowly crumbling under her.

"It's true that Root members are trained to block out emotional reactions and impulses, but that doesn't mean we don't think for ourselves. The battlefield requires a certain level of freethinking and adaptation, making Root operatives better suited for solo work."

And then realization dawned on Sakura. "The Root teams that were tracking us from Konoha...They weren't sent to stop us, were they?"

Kuma shook his head slowly. "No, Haruno. If a team of ANBU Root were trailing you at the start of your mission, then they were sent to follow you to me, to assassinate me."

Suddenly, Sakura felt incredibly stupid. The ANBU Root team that had been following them would have ended this much sooner. If only Root and the Konoha main had shared intelligence, all this could have been avoided.

Kuma exhaled and continued, "Danzo wants the title of Hokage, so I amassed an army to bring Konoha so close to the precipice of destruction that they would have to turn to new leadership. It's logical that Danzo, with a complete understanding of my thought process, would be the only one to know how to counter my attack. The Root division would be the most effective at wiping out the enemy because the training of _my _soldiers has been almost identical. Root, bred on the suppression of emotion, would have no qualms about annihilating an army of women and children. The Konoha main, however, are soft with compassion. I'm sure the upcoming fight will take its toll on them all, psychologically as well as physically."

"You underestimate us." Sakura supplied. "Tsunade is a stronger leader than you imagine. _We_ are stronger than you imagine."

"You put a lot of stock in the Hokage, Haruno. You also seem to think the Hokage puts a lot of stock in you. Would you say you are close to the Hokage, Haruno?"

Sakura fell silent, reeling from all she had learned and having no choice but to let her body sink fully to the floor.

"You must be. You are her apprentice, after all."

Silence.

She wanted to tell him to go to hell, wanted to say something to make him realize what a mistake this was, but her tongue felt like a ball of cotton and she just couldn't get the words out.

He was walking towards her now.

Without the ability to turn her head, Kuma's feet were the only things Sakura could see.

"You are going to be my prized possession. While Konoha is crumbling under the attack, the Hokage will be heavily protected, but when you return in a blaze of glory, the only survivor of your team with the knowledge your leader's needs, she will accept you with open arms and you will slit her throat. While she bleeds out on the floor of her gilded office, there you'll be, cursed with more power than you can imagine, cutting through the jounin ranks like butter."

A tear rolled down Sakura's face. Inside she was screaming. Inside she was ripping this traitorous bastard limb from limb, but her body didn't move. Tears seemed the only thing it was capable of.

She was picked up easily and lowered onto the gurney.

"Doctor, please proceed with the seal then send her down for programming. After that, Hiroto-san needs some medical assistance in the infirmary." Kuma said before disappearing.

Milky blue eyes filled her vision. An older man with salt and pepper hair wearing a high neck lab coat smiled in a manner that should have been reassuring.

There was a cold pressure against her thigh as her shorts were pulled down over her hips.

_Doctors always have cold hands_…

He made a thoughtful sound as he prodded the orchid tattoo Kakashi had given her for her cover.

"A good fake," he said in a cracked, hoarse voice.

Sakura suspected that he was probably a heavy smoker.

"Never mind. We'll just have to put it on the other side."

Unfurling a small scroll over her waist, he started to prepare a complex seal with light strokes of a calligraphy brush.

She managed to force a very quiet and strained whimper through her teeth and his eyes snapped to hers, foggy and a little lost.

"Shh, shh..." he crooned with a gentleness that touched every part of his face except his eyes. "I know you're thinking that what Kuma-san is doing is terrible, but you wait and see. In the long run it will be better for everyone. His master is a tactical, driven man who will overthrow our enemies and restore a proper balance to the great nations, and countries like mine will prosper, no longer threatened by the unstable power surrounding our borders. You wait and see," he smiled warmly at her and his vacant eyes switched back to his writing.

Sakura tried to argue, to tell this man that Danzo, if ever put in power, would crush rather than unite. That little countries like Taki would be mere cannon fodder under his reign, but once again only a snivelling whimper escaped her lips.

"You're right!" the doctor nodded, keeping his focus on the symbols across her belly. "Kuma-san is a great man. I'm so honoured to be part of this, as should you be. You'll end up being possibly the most important soldier to graduate."

The way he said "graduate" was unnerving, as if he honestly believed that what he was doing was normal and a privilege.

When he once again turned his gaze back to her face, Sakura was absolutely sure about one thing…This man was bat-shit, fucking crazy.

"Now when I apply the seal, it will feel very uncomfortable. The sensation of your chakra gates being pried open is never a pleasant one, but the pain will subside in time. This is why we've given you a muscle relaxant. It will lessen the stress on your body and also help the seal to take."

The way he spoke was kind and reassuring. In fact, Sakura would say he had possibly the best bedside manner she had come across in recent years, but she was terrified.

The tears fell unhindered from her open, staring eyes. This seal would kill her and it would do it slowly and she would be used as a weapon against someone she viewed as a surrogate mother, especially since her estrangement from her own.

All too soon, his hand was glowing with a purple light.

All too soon, the ink was jumping off the paper and into his waiting palm.

His hand moved down towards her skin at a frighteningly slow pace in a second that seemed to stretch on forever.

_Will it hurt?_

The glowing hand continued its steady arch.

_Will I even be aware of who I am after this?_

She could feel the prickling aura of the sealing jutsu drawing closer to her thigh.

_Will I even know that when I drag a blade across my beloved leader's throat that it's wrong?_

The heat drew closer and Sakura found the inner strength to close her eyes.

_Will my friends hesitate before they kill me?_

Her fingers twitched against the plastic sheet, but it wasn't enough. It was too late.

_Ino, Chouji, Shikamaru, Kiba, Hinata, Shino, Lee, Neji, Tenten…Will I remember the word "friend"?_

Closer.

_Tsunade, Shizune, my interns at the hospital, Iruka-sensei… _

Closer.

_Kakashi._

Closer.

_Kakashi. _

The tears ran down her face at a snail's crawl as the hand drew ever closer.

_I have to find a way to remember. I have to find a way out. I have to... I have to..._

"R-A-A-A-S-E-N-N-G-A-N-N!!!"

* * *

_**AN:**_

_yeah…hands up who saw that coming…all of you? Dammit! lol,_

_Next chapter = Flashback no jutsu!!!_

_SlinkyM xxx_


	16. Chapter 15: Flashback, Crawl Forward

_Thank you to new reviewers, returning reviewers and silent stalkers alike for your support so far. Also big shouts for __**ShipperTrish**__ for her huge efforts in making this readable and generally for her support! This is slowly turning into a MONSTER!_

_SlinkyM x_

_

* * *

  
_

**Chapter 15: **_**Flashback, Crawl Forward…**_

The first explosion sent a low rumbling tremor through the bowels of the complex. The damaged strip lighting stuttered and blinked, sending another sheet of white sparks down into dark water. The reflection looked like festival fireworks igniting in the summer sky, brilliant starbursts in the dark confines of a library. You almost couldn't tell which way was up. Tipping forward and gripping onto the large wooden table for support, blue eyes met black in the strobing light and a pregnant silence descended as both shinobi listened keenly to the faint sounds of destruction above them.

A crack in the ceiling appeared, moving like lightning across the smooth surface, its journey quick and determined as it snaked its way through the room as if tugged by invisible wire.

A fine rain of plaster and dust fell into their now upturned eyes and Naruto blinked rapidly, grinding his sleeve across his irritated sockets.

Without the need to communicate their situation verbally, both ninjas sprung into action.

Naruto leaped over the table on unsteady feet and over to the large map of Konoha and began hastily ripping down the pinned bingo pages, the sheets of statistics, and any other anonymous pieces of paper which looked as if they might be of use. Rolling them up quickly and hurriedly, he passed them to Sai who pushed them deep into his satchel.

The second explosion ripped through the room with such violence that both shinobi' were thrown to the floor, Sai's head cracking painfully against the corner of the table. He sunk limply into the water.

The shelving units tipped and swayed, finally falling like dominoes. Books and folders spewed out into the shin deep water.

The tremors increased in violence and Sai felt himself dragged by the collar under the large oak table as he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes. The ringing in his ears was irritatingly persistent as he turned his blurry vision to Naruto who was trying to shout above the all encompassing noise of the complex ripping apart.

Large chunks of plaster fell like meteors into the water and other slabs of debris onto the desk above them, which cracked and splintered, but remained stable.

"Sai…SAI!!!"

Sai inclined his head towards his teammate and blinked slowly like a lizard as he tried to decipher what was being said to him.

Naruto's hand found its way to the back of Sai's head and he winced as Naruto's fingers prodded none too gently around the crown of his skull.

"You're bleeding!" Naruto shouted, wiping his soiled hand on his jacket and thrusting a small roll of bindings from his weapons' pouch towards Sai.

Sai's eyes rolled a little, losing focus, and he grasped Naruto's shoulder to keep himself from tipping sideways.

Naruto cursed again, leaning forward and wrapping the makeshift bandages around Sai's head as tightly as he could.

The blonde's mouth was moving again, but Sai still couldn't quite understand what was being asked of him.

Snapping his fingers impatiently in front of Sai's face, Naruto tried once again.

"Wake up! We need to get out of here! Can you walk?!"

Sai's head lolled to the side in response and bobbed in what could have been in equal parts either a nod for the affirmative or a shake for the negative.

Naruto huffed again, throwing Sai's arm over his broad shoulders and tugged the slighter man out from under the relative safety the large desk offered.

Slowly, agonizingly slow, they made their way towards the door.

They shakily navigated their way through the large corridors, past the large arenas and various medical rooms, leaning heavily against the wall and using blind hands for guidance.

Thick, black smoke billowed up and around them, shortening the visibility to only a few feet ahead.

The heat was sweltering, the raging inferno blazing somewhere above them sucking out valuable oxygen with every second that passed.

Smaller explosions shook the corridors and sometimes weight bearing beams became fully visible behind the crumbling walls.

Naruto struggled forward, Sai's weight against his side hindering his progress as he tried to remember which way they had come.

"Sai…Sai? Which way now?" he stuttered out between chocking coughs. "Sai, come on! I can't remember…_cough_…All these corridors look the same!" he said close to his companion's ear, jiggling his grip slightly in an attempt to rouse a response from the frighteningly quiet artist.

Another tremor pitched him further into the wall.

"Shit…SAI! Come on, WAKE UP!"

Slowly Sai's hand came up motioning them left before dropping back to his side.

"Okay…okay. Good."

Finally, the recognizable doorway to the stairwell came into view and Naruto heaved a sigh of relief, hitching his friend up higher on his shoulder. With a determined growl, he strode forward and pushed the door aside.

They began the long climb up numerous flights of stairs.

* * *

Sai, whose head was still feeling foggy and unclear, watched with an expressionless face as Naruto kicked and swore at the wall, his frustration giving him the energy to curse every god he could name in a spectacular tirade that even Sai, with his own famously barbed tongue, was a little shocked at. Sai hadn't even heard some of those expletives.

"…fucking-shit-eating-cocking-bastards-couldn't-have-given-us-a-fucking-break-and-blocked-the-way-eight-shitting-flights-ago! We're fucking trapped!"

"Naruto, you're using up all the oxygen." Sai interrupted, working his tongue slowly around the words, which felt too long and complicated in his current condition.

"We're trapped!" Naruto repeated and gave one last kick to the mountain of hot debris blocking their path before slumping dejectedly against the wall next to Sai. He unzipped his jacket and used it to wipe the sweat from his grime covered face.

"Do you think Kakashi and Sakura are-" Sai's half finished wheezed question had Naruto clamping his hand firmly over Sai's mouth.

"Don't even finish that sentence!" Naruto snapped with uncharacteristic venom. "They're fine and when we get out of here she'll fix your head, give me a nice massage, and agree to let me take her out on a date," he finished in a softer voice.

The stairwell shook and the debris shifted. A pebble of plaster rolled down the blockade, clicking shapely against the floor and came to a stop by Naruto's thigh.

Naruto removed his hand from Sai's mouth, picked the pebble up, and rolled it between his fingers. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the wall. It was getting harder to breath.

The silence stretched between them for long seconds before the foreign sound of Sai's dry chuckling reached Naruto's ears over the grinding and rumbling going on around them.

Eyes blinking open, Naruto fixed Sai with an astounded look.

"Are you _actually_ laughing?"

The chuckling increased in volume, Sai's eyes closed as he wiped a tired hand across his eyes.

"What's so funny?"

Sai coughed once to dispel the fit of laughter and met Naruto's questioning gaze with a cockeyed smirk. "I think Sakura would rather cut out her own tongue than give you a massage. She'd need a microscope to find it anyway."

"Eh?! What are you talking about, arsehole?!"

"Sakura doesn't seem the type to willingly oil and massage your intimate parts. I would quite like to see you attempt to convince her that it would be a beneficial experience for her. She would probably-"

"Not that kind of massage, you pervert! Where the hell did you get that idea from?!" Naruto squeaked, trying to fight the flaming red blush that was imprinting itself under layers of sweat and soot.

"Kakashi recommended a book on understanding the relationships between men and women. One particular chapter went into great detail on the use of massage in foreplay." Sai stated matter-of-factly.

It was Naruto's turn to chuckle. "Well, I had meant more of a physiotherapy type of massage, but now that you mention it…"

"She'd kill you." Sai said.

"Yes, she would." Naruto said fondly, a touch of worry colouring his words. "I can't believe you actually laughed."

"Neither can I. Must be the lack of oxygen."

"So…Any good ideas on how we can get out of here and find our team before we choke to death?" Naruto asked, hurling the small rock in his hands back into the debris.

Sai seemed to consider this for a long time, conscious thought seeming harder to grab hold of than usual, but he did have an idea…just not a very good one.

"Pass me my bag."

***

Naruto glared at the group of three rats milling about trying to push their way through the compressed rubble in front of them.

"This is your plan? _More_ rats?"

Sai shrugged in a noncommittal fashion and replied with a short "Rats always abandon a sinking ship."

"We aren't on a ship, idiot."

"Rats are survivors."

"Huh? Oh, look!" Naruto pointed as the three small inky animals turned in unison and started scampering back down the stairs.

"Quick, follow them." Sai said, latching onto Naruto's shoulder again as they navigated the smoky stairwell.

The rats led them back through the lower levels of the complex, sometimes stopping to dig at holes in the walls, sometimes doubling back on themselves, or leading them in circles. Occasionally, they would disappear from sight, running away into the stifling smoke only to reappear seconds later, squeaking out high pitched commands that even Sai couldn't understand.

Eventually, chests heaving with exertion, the boys caught up to the rats in a grotty toilet cubicle where the rodents were clawing excitedly at the toilet basin and a small grating in the cubical floor.

"I see..." Sai said, holding his hands up in a single seal.

The rats instantly dissolved into inky puddles, which slowly drained into the grating on the floor.

Digging around further into his satchel, Sai pulled out what Naruto recognized to be an explosive tag and slapped it over the grate.

Both boys moved quickly back into the corridor, waiting with backs to the walls as they both mentally followed the time release countdown.

_4…3…2…1…_

The small controlled explosion was barely heard over the din of the levels above them collapsing.

Rushing in to inspect their handiwork, Sai gave a grunt of satisfaction at the sight of the gaping hole in the cubical floor. The toilet basin was cracked and charred and Sai wasted no time in kicking it out of the way, fully exposing the large open copper pipe.

Naruto wrinkled his nose at the foul stench of ammonia and faeces wafting up from the drainage system and suppressed the urge to gag.

"So I guess we're going down there?"

Sai crouched down, bringing out a lighter and holding it down into the small crawl space. The flame flickered and dragged. "It's a way out. The fire's jumping towards fresh air."

Without preamble, the artist passed Naruto a glow stick. Snapping his own, he placed it firmly in-between his teeth and carefully lowered himself into the pipe and onto his stomach, crawling forward on his elbows.

Naruto took one last look around at the small room, wondering how much longer the floors would hold, and dropped into the pipe behind his partner.

"I guess it's better than dying," he mumbled before shoving the stick in his mouth as he lowered his stomach into the vile sludge that coated the pipe and began edging forward after his partner.

The pipe was long and tight. As they crawled further, the sewage seemed to get deeper and the crawlspace funnelled smaller.

Naruto's neck and shoulders had started to seize as he tried to keep his mouth and nose above the sewage, which was now sloshing against his throat. He had to angle his hips slightly to move through the pipe and didn't know whether to be grateful or appalled by the noxious ooze that lubricated their journey. The chemical stench of industrial disinfectant was making him feel even more nauseous and dizzy than the overpowering smell of bodily waste.

The eerie green glow from the stick held tightly in his teeth surrounded him like a halo, only allowing him to make out shuffling sandals, the bobbing of a dirty satchel, and the curve of Sai's arse as he set a brutal pace through the pipe.

His hand sunk into something just shy of solid and he growled low in the back of his throat as he once again struggled with the need to gag.

"T'is is 'ishustin."

"I 'umpletely a'ree."

A tremendous crash from roughly half a mile behind them resonated through the tight pipe and even though both shinobi knew that the lower levels of the underground complex had finally collapsed, neither particularly felt like voicing it.

Taking a deep calming breath and then immediately regretting it, Sai cracked his neck from side to side before shuffling forward again towards where he hoped they would find a way out of this mess.

* * *

In a dingy back alley in the centre of Taki, just streets away from the market district, long, blackened fingers curled around the grated iron of a manhole cover and with great effort, lifted it up and pushed it aside. One figure emerged, bent and weary, and then another who promptly fell to his knees and retched into the gutter.

As they crept silently through the shadowed back streets, the watchful eyes of Taki's homeless regarded them from the gutters with fear and trepidation.

In the failing evening light, the two shinobi' appeared as demons from another plain. The word "Shinigami" was whispered between old wizened men who rubbed their hands together and passed around bottles clothed in brown paper.

Naruto and Sai remained oblivious as they moved from shadow to shadow on their way out of Taki, but their presence sparked the start of a story that would prove to be one of Taki's most enduring urban legends for years to come, the story of twin death gods born from the devil's bowel. Black and deadly, they rose from the gutters to spread pestilence among the impure.

"Hours, it took hours! I'm never gonna get this taste out of my mouth!" Naruto grumbled, spitting into the bushes as they slipped out of the city.

"That was a most unpleasant experience," acknowledged Sai, trying in vain to wipe his dirty hands on his dirty clothes.

"Let's go find Sakura-chan and Baka-sensei!"

"Yes, let's."

* * *

Tenzou wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and started the long walk back up his self made tunnel. The wooden beams and struts he had constructed latticed up towards the starry night sky and he palmed each one as he passed, imbuing a little chakra into each of the joints to reinforce them. It was a long, slow process that was eating away at his chakra supply with each foot he dug. He had already expended a large amount on the journey to Waterfall Country, his team pushing themselves to their limits to arrive on scene in a matter of hours instead of days. Standing at the mouth of his construction, he pushed up his mask and closed his eyes against the cool night air.

"Here." called Genma, chucking down a canteen of water from on top of the large pile of rumble they had excavated, his mask also pushed up, a familiar piece of metal glinting in the moonlight.

Catching the canteen with ease despite his fatigued state, Tenzou gratefully swallowed the lukewarm water, splashing a little over his head and neck to cool off.

"You should take a break."

"Can't."

"You'll kill yourself if you keep up this pace."

Tenzou grunted in response before riffling in his bag for another soldier pill.

"And stop popping them like candy! Kakashi would never approve and you know how dosing yourself up with stims makes you moody."

"Maybe if you stopped sunbathing and did some work I wouldn't have to."

Genma grinned at that and pointed a finger up at the moon. "I need to work on my tan to look good for all the ladies, ne?"

Tenzou let out a snorting chuckle that quickly turned into a yawn.

"Maybe a little break to work on my own tan wouldn't be entirely out of the question."

A sharp, static rustling in both men's ears quickly laid waste to that idea, however.

"_Otter, Cougar, two chakra signatures are closing in on your location. Do I intercept? Over." _

Jerked out of their companionable conversation, both men instantly dropped into defensive stances and tipped their ANBU identities back down over their faces.

"Is she sure?" Genma asked needlessly.

Pressing a finger to his ear, Tenzou spoke in a calm, precise voice. "Owl, this is Otter. Please confirm that targets are heading towards our location. Confirm visual. Over."

"_Negative on clear visual. Targets' trajectory will lead them directly to your location in approximately six minutes coming from south, southeast. Over."_

"Dammit!" Genma hissed.

"Owl, why negative on visual? Please confirm number of targets. Over."

"_I only sense two chakra signatures. Targets are ahead of me by three hundred meters and are too well camouflaged to confirm numbers by visual, although-"_

"Although?"

"_Targets are leaving a very…obvious scent trail. Over."_

"Some sort of camouflaging genjutsu? Designed to disguise numbers by messing up sensory pathways maybe? It wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like that. You know, killing Taki shinobi' would be a bad move for national relations." Genma supplied, his weapon drawn as he leaped into position some twenty meters away.

"They have to pin it on us first." Tenzou muttered before once again lifting his finger to his earpiece. "Owl, fallback to our position immediately and assume a staggered defence formation. Over."

"_Roger that."_

_

* * *

  
_

Naruto stepped into the clearing ahead of Sai and stood, mouth hanging from its hinges, arms by his sides, and eyes bugging out of his head at the sight of the colossal crater stretching out ahead of him.

"Wow…"

Walking forward and gingerly fingering the sore lump on the back of his head, Sai let his gaze follow Naruto's. He dropped his satchel down onto the ground by his feet and tried to discern the expressions playing across Naruto's face, which was made harder by the layers of grime caking his features. His body language, however, was easier for Sai to interpret: the way Naruto's shoulders slumped a little at the sight before them, the way his Adam's apple quivered slightly, and the way his fists clenched and unclenched in quick succession.

"Wow…" Naruto said again, his voice sounding croaked and almost mechanical. "There's nothing left…There's…I mean, what if…"

Sai stepped forward and awkwardly placed what he hoped would be a reassuring hand on Naruto's shoulder.

"She's going to fix my head and then give you an erotic massage, remember?" he said, fixing a smile on his face that felt more forced than usual.

Naruto's own face stretched into what Sai recognized as a different kind of fake smile, the kind he often gave Sakura when they talked of bringing Sasuke home, complete with overenthusiastic nodding and a shaky thumb's up.

"Of course." Naruto said simply, not trusting his voice enough to say much else.

Sai's hand tightened its grip on his shoulder, fingers digging down deeply into his clavicle in a way that drew Naruto's attention at once. Sai's narrowed eyes and whispered command of _"Down" _had them both dropping quickly to the floor in unison as a kunai sailed with a whistling whine past their heads.

Naruto rolled away, sliding quickly behind the cover of a badly burnt tree stump as another kunai embedded itself in the badly scorched ground where he had just been.

Snatching his bag up from the ground and looping its strap around his shoulder, Sai leaped down the wall of the crater, dislodging a layer of warm topsoil as he gathered speed as he ran full pelt down the unstable sheer sides.

His free hand reached around to grasp the hilt of his flat edged tanto, bringing it smoothly in front of him to deflect three senbon' which were sailing toward his carotid artery. A fourth and fifth senbon struck him in the thigh and threw him violently off balance, tumbling forward.

His knee met the ground, throwing him head-over-heels onto his back and knocking the air clean from his lungs.

On autopilot, he thrust a gloved hand out, his palm dragging down the side of the crater in an attempt to slow his fall, and then spinning right ways he landed at the base of the crater and slipped neatly behind a pile of rubble, rubbing a hand across his chest to ease the uncomfortable tightness.

Through the clouds of kicked up dust he could make out the silhouette of the enemy flitting into cover.

_This one favors mid to long range projectiles that require skill and accuracy to be successful. So by deduction, my opponent is less comfortable with close range hand to hand combat or is proficient at both. Either way, I have to get closer..._

Plucking his sketchbook from the satchel, he hastily began sketching, using the blood soaked senbon from the wound in his thigh.

Naruto thumbed his shuriken pouch as he tried to think of a way to get out of the exposed area he found himself in.

Sai had dropped out of view only a second ago. The familiar clang of metal on metal let Naruto know that Sai was hopefully holding his own.

Naruto poked his head up from behind the tree stump in the hope that he would be able to locate his target, but was greeted by another kunai sailing close enough to his face to graze his cheek. Slumping back down into cover, he brought his hands together and shouted the words "_Kage Bushin no Jutsu!_"

* * *

Genma cursed when he saw the first barrage of senbon' deflected so easily. The second set hit their mark, though, and sent his opponent tumbling out of sight behind one of the many clusters of rubble. He wanted to get closer, but was reluctant to relinquish his position until he was sure Tenzou could gain the advantage. He wasn't sure how Yugao was doing, but he'd seen her jump down from her vantage point in the trees only seconds before.

Tenzou's smooth voice broke through his analysis. _"Cougar, any information on the first target? Over."_

"Male. Uses a katana or other one handed blade. Quick reflexes. Seems to prefer to keep his dista-Shit!"

"_Cougar, Cougar! Stop! That's-"_

Genma rolled backwards in shock, knocking the earpiece off his head as the swirling black wings of a giant bird broke through the dust clouds, beating strongly against its breast as it turned and swooped towards him. It seemed to hover for a split second before exploding into a raining cloud of black ink, which splattered across Genma's mask and chest. He was already reaching for his katana, but he didn't get to it quickly enough. The veil of black opened to reveal his opponent twisting gracefully in midair, blunt tanto poised and ready to strike at his throat.

A pillar of wood shot up from the ground a hair's breadth from Genma's nose and the tanto sank harmlessly into it. The attacking shinobi's feet met wood as he sprung safely to the side, ripping the weapon out with a sharp, splintering tug.

Tenzou appeared between the two looking from one to the other and holding up a placating hand to his teammate and _filthy_ former subordinate.

"Sai? Is that you under there? It's good to see you. I'd recognize that technique anywhere," he said, carefully gesturing to Genma's ink splattered form.

Dusting himself off and clearly favouring one leg, Sai smiled blankly back, dipping slightly into a shallow bow.

"Yamato-sempai. What are you doing here?"

Genma, who was now leaning against the pillar with a perplexed look on his face, opened his mouth to speak when the cry of _"Kage Bushin no Jutsu!" _was heard loudly from high up above the crater followed by the familiar bursting pops of Naruto's signature move.

"Naruto!" Tenzou exclaimed, pointing up at the rim of the basin.

All three shinobi turned to run.

"Owl, fallback, we're dealing with friendlies! I repeat, friendlies!" Tenzou shouted frantically down the mic as they scrambled up the sharp incline.

Upon cresting the hill, they were met by the sight of Naruto lying face down in the dirt with Yugao standing over him, grinding her heel into the back of his head.

"Owl…" Tenzou started.

"Yeah, I heard you. Friendlies." she said, placing her hands firmly on her hips and grinding her foot down harder.

Naruto answered that with a muffled _"humph."_

If the blank expression of an ANBU mask could scowl, then the Owl was doing just that.

"What happened?" Sai asked, a little stunned that Naruto would go down so easily even to an ANBU elite.

"He created fifty clones, took one look at me, then promptly dispelled them saying he 'wouldn't hit a girl'." Came her venom-laced reply. She flicked her long, purple hair haughtily and crossed her arms looking pointedly at Otter.

"Mrrr mred mrr mm'dun 'it ma meaff mimmomi mssmermy ma murl!" Naruto said incoherently into the ground.

"What was that, Naruto?" Otter asked.

Owl removed her foot, allowing Naruto to sit up and spit out the dirt in his mouth.

"I said, 'I wouldn't hit a leaf shinobi, especially a girl!'" he cried defensively.

"How did you know I was Leaf?" the owl masked kunoichi asked in a tight voice.

"The hilt of your katana is carved from _'pink flamewood' _a type of maple tree only native to the central region of Fire Country. Touchy tree, very specific about its climate and also very expensive." Naruto shrugged, then noticing the stunned look on Sai's face and the rigidly shocked postures of his other comrades, he spoke with clear indignation. "What?! Iruka-sensei has a thing for hand carved furniture. He bought a chest of drawers in that same type of wood last year and went on and on and _on _about how buying pink furniture does not make you gay, just open minded."

The Otter made a wet spluttering noise, the Cougar coughed a cough that sounded awfully like _"Denial much?"_, the Owl nodded in agreement, and Sai looked unmoved.

"So what are you doing here, Yamato-teichou?" Naruto asked.

"You knew it was me?" Tenzou huffed, pushing the otter mask up onto the top of his head.

"Scary voice and scary eyes, no offense."

"Oh." Tenzou said, _trying_ not to take offense. "Well once you two get cleaned up, we'll be escorting you back to Konoha."

"What the hell happened to you two anyway? You look like shit and smell like, well, shit." Cougar asked, waving a hand in front of his face.

"Our escape route was unorthodox." Sai supplied.

"Unorthodox?"

"Improvised." Sai stated flatly.

"Wait, wait, wait. Konoha?" Naruto cut in. "What about Sakura-chan and Sensei? We can't just leave them here!"

"Sakura and Kakashi are fine, Naruto."

Both boys breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hokage-sama received a communiqué informing her that they would be following up a lead on a man by the name of 'Nakamizu Hiroto', which I believe you supplied them with, Sai, before continuing back to Konoha. They should arrive slightly behind us if we leave now. I know you both must be exhausted, but it's prudent we report any details you may have on your mission as soon as possible."

"But Yamato-teichou, Kakashi said to meet him here for a regroup. If they're following up our lead, we should make sure they have all the information."

"That is correct." Sai agreed.

"Sorry, Naruto, Sai, but our orders are to bring you back to Konoha immediately."

All five ninja regarded each other as the temperature seemed to drop by twenty degrees.

"We are _not_ going anywhere." Naruto said eventually, crossing his arms and squaring his shoulders as if he was rooted to the ground.

"Naruto, please don't make this difficult. We're all tired and the sooner we get back, the sooner we can let the Hokage know you're both alright."

"No."

"Listen, you little brat," spat Owl, "We outrank you, so we'll damn well drag you back if we have to!"

"Actually…" Sai said, lifting a finger to interject. "You don't outrank _me_. I'm also ANBU, which in this instance makes Naruto my subordinate."

"Listen here, you bastard-"

"Let me finish, Naruto," Sai said, cutting him off with a convincing glare, "the absence of our team leader means that as the highest ranking member of our team, I am now responsible for the mission. I wish to help supply Kakashi and Sakura with the information they will need."

Naruto's open mouth clicked shut with an audible snap as he regarded Sai with impressed eyes.

"Also," started Sai, bringing out a bundle of papers from his satchel and holding them up for all to see, "Kakashi and Sakura may be having a more difficult time than we first imagined."

Tenzou stepped forward to study the papers. "What's this?" he asked, his eyes scanning the long list of names.

"It's the file detailing all the ninjas and mercenaries currently in the employ of Nakamizu."

Rubbing his face with both hands, Tenzou turned to his two teammates. "So I guess we have a change of plan."

Both Owl and Cougar nodded.

"So how do we go about finding Nakamizu?"

"Easy." Sai smiled behind his dirt encrusted features and brandished another sheet of paper. "I have the address right here."

* * *

Kenta took another deep drag on his cigarette and kicked the tree next to him in agitation, sending gnarled chunks of lichen covered bark falling down onto the moss cushioned ground.

Although it was still an hour shy of sunrise, the birds were already chattering agitatedly in the branches, their song at war with the commotion in his head. Kenta usually found the sounds of the forest soothing, but tonight they only seemed to amplify his raging emotions.

He had helped that bastard to the infirmary. He actually helped him!

Kenta's fingers had itched with suppressed anger as he had lowered that sick brute of a human being onto crisp, white bedsheets while his daughter lay, most probably broken and violated, in one of the many heavily guarded observation rooms. Maybe she was out there now, marching towards Konoha, a mindless, impulse-driven shell. Maybe she wasn't even alive. Maybe, hopefully, the seal had failed and she'd died quickly, maybe even painlessly before they could abuse her, before that filthy, bloated sack of shit could lay a hand on her.

When he had seen the devastation Hatake Kakashi had reaped on Nakamizu's face, he could only inwardly seethe that it hadn't been him knuckle deep in bloody flesh, but in reality he knew he lacked the courage. He was a weak man, a stupid man who had put family before both duty and country. He couldn't lift a finger against Nakamizu, a mere civilian, and he most certainly couldn't lift a finger against that psycho Kuma.

Kenta flicked away the crumbling ash of his cigarette and sucked deeply down to the filter.

He was a traitor and nothing was going to change that.

The kunai against his throat made him drop the smouldering butt onto the forest floor. He shifted his eyes down to see a black sandal stub it out and Kenta noticed absently for the first time that the birds were silent.

Hot breath fluttered against his ear. "How many guards are patrolling the perimeter?"

Closing his eyes and releasing a shaky breath that only caused the blade to bite deeper, Kenta replied with calm acceptance that he was going to die.

"Six on the outer perimeter and another nine at vantage points across the grounds."

"Very good. Now please point to where the highest concentration of guards are and where we can locate Nakamizu Hiroto."

An unfinished, crudely drawn and dirtied map of the manor and grounds was held in front of his nose.

"Hiroto?" Kenta whispered. "What do you want with-"

"Just answer the question." came another voice from in front of him.

Looking over the edge of the map, Kenta's eyes met coal black ones framed by pale alabaster skin, a thick, dark curtain of hair, and a headband engraved with the symbol of Konohagakure.

"Leaf." The single word left his lips like a prayer.

"If he won't cooperate, kill him." said the shinobi who looked barely older than seventeen to the man over his shoulder. The blade at his throat cut deeper.

"No, no, no, wait!" Kenta hissed desperately. "You also came for your friends, didn't you? Hatake Kakashi and the pink haired girl…Sakura?"

Sai's disinterested expression fell into a keener arrangement.

"What about them?"

"Kuma-san's holding them captive. He's probably torturing Hatake Kakashi as we speak. I can help you. I really, really _can _help you."

* * *

_AN: __Next Chapter = Back to the present…wooo! Peace._


	17. Chapter 16: Belly of the Beast

_Thank you so much to ShipperTrish for betaing all of this, you are a joy! _

* * *

**Chapter 16: **_**Belly of the Beast**_

Cool green chakra poured into bloody mangled flesh, a scaffolding of bone and cartilage being slowly reinforced and shaped under torn, bruised skin. Bubbles of red hued liquid foamed and burst from sunken nostrils as the nasal cavity was painstakingly reformed. Gradually, the rattling wheeze quieted to a soft, wet whistle as air found an unblocked route down to oxygen deprived lungs.

The nurse wiped a tired hand across her forehead and turned to prepare another syringe of painkilling sedative.

A chubby, sweaty hand gripped her wrist like a vice as Hiroto struggled to sit up. He turned his misshapen head towards her and the nurse stared blankly back at the cold fury burning in his open eye, the sclera was mottled with crimson where the blood vessels had burst behind it. His other eye, the left, had sealed totally shut from ugly purple swelling, and the whole left side of his face was almost completely concave with his cheek split, exposing yellow, fatty tissue. Meanwhile, clear liquid wept from the numerous cuts despite her best efforts to stem them.

"No nore n'edicine," he said almost incoherently, blood dribbling from his almost toothless mouth as he clawed at the IV line stuck in the back of his hand.

"Hiroto-san, this will just help regulate your breathing and take the pain away," the nurse replied robotically.

Hiroto moved with surprising speed, sweeping his arm up and knocking the syringe from her waiting hands. It skittered across the linoleum flooring.

"No nore n'edicine!" he demanded wetly, wincing as pain shot through him.

"Trouble?" came the flat voice from the doorway.

"Kuma-san, Hiroto is refusing to allow me to minister another sedative," the nurse said, plucking up a roll of bandages and a packet of gauze then turning her vacant stare to the masked figure.

"How much progress have you made?"

"I've managed to reopen his airway and stop the haemorrhaging behind his left eye. The doctor will need to rebuild the rest. I don't have the skill or control to do it."

"So he'll live?"

"Yes." she said, easing Hiroto forward and starting to wrap his head.

Kuma nodded and then turned to the man sprawled across the hospital gurney.

"Hiroto, please take the medication."

"I wan 'o see 'hat man."

"You want to see Hatake?"

"I wan 'o wa'ch you kill 'im. I wan 'o wa'ch you break 'im apart."

"I think in your current condition it's best if you don't exert yourself Hiroto."

"-ook wha' he did 'o me!"

Kuma seemed to consider this for a short while before nodding his acceptance.

"Very well. I suppose this is your estate and I can't stop you. It would also be detrimental to our business relationship if you held this against me." He clicked his fingers at the nurse to gain her attention and she finished knotting the bandages. "Get him moved into a wheelchair. The doctor will be a while yet. I have him working on a new patient."

The nurse merely nodded.

* * *

Kakashi worked quietly, wriggling the joints that secured him to the wall, hoping that the brickwork was old enough to give a little. Occasionally, there would be a small sifting sound as the cement between the bricks crumbled slightly, but these tiny signs of progress were followed only by the grinding whine of metal on metal. If he could just get the full use of his hands back, he was sure he could get out of here. His breathing was fast and shallow as he strained his arms almost to the point of dislocation against the bonds. His wrists, wet with blood and sweat, slammed against the wall in frustration.

"Dammit! This is useless!" he growled to himself.

Of course, it would help if he could see what he was doing. The woven cloth bag over his head was making it difficult to keep up a sustainable pace. The double layer of fabric - his own mask and the bag - were lessening his intake of oxygen and making him feel lightheaded, and the cord securing the bag and chakra collar were rubbing uncomfortably against his windpipe.

Were these restraints routed into the foundations of the building? They certainly seemed impossible to rip out. He wasn't even sure how long he'd been at it because he couldn't _see_ if there had been any change in light.

The muscles in Kakashi's shoulders were screaming, his injured hands throbbing along in time with his elevated heart rate. It all seemed like a futile effort.

"_Kakashi, it's the tattoo…It's a seal! It's as if it's wedging their chakra gates open…"_

Her voice was clear as a bell to him. If they did that to her, he didn't know how he could live with himself.

_"Leaving even the smallest crack open in their chakra system would eventually kill them."_

That little speech he had given her on surviving torture, on his own success in similar situations, it was suddenly feeling bitterly redundant.

He had to get to Sakura before they finished the seal on her.

With a massive heave, he wrenched the first shackle from the wall and cheered mentally as his right arm gained some slack.

"Trying to escape?" Kuma's low voice sounded disembodied in the echoey cell.

Kakashi's low groan of aggravation was his only response. He hadn't heard Kuma coming as usual. Even if his attention hadn't been focused on his task, he still probably wouldn't have, but now that he listened, he could hear people approaching his cell.

There was a soft, staggered tapping against the wet concrete floor. It was the sound of a woman with a short stride wearing slightly heeled shoes. She was accompanied by the low, rolling thrum of something heavy that was moving at a steady pace, a rhythmic squeaking punctuating its progress…a wheelchair?

"I've brought Hiroto to see you. He seems to have some unresolved business that's interfering with his recovery. I thought I'd let him work it out."

The chain on his right arm was once again pulled taut and held in place seemingly by Kuma. Kakashi could hear the other two entering his cell now. Presumably it was Hiroto's wheelchair that clanged loudly against the metal stable door. He could hear the bloated man's breathing now over the squeaking of the un-oiled chair. It was a damp rattling sound and Kakashi congratulated himself silently. Hiroto must have been having more trouble breathing than him.

The lancing pain that tore across Kakashi's back was barely anticipated.

He clamped his mouth shut on a scream, his breath catching hard in his throat.

_Thwack!_

"Kuma, keep hold of 'hish son-of-a-bitshh."

It came again.

"He is secure." Kuma said, tightening his grip on the chain.

"I'll tear you 'o ribbon-ssh for wha' you did to my fa-shh." Hiroto snarled.

Panting hard, Kakashi turned his head towards where he estimated Hiroto was sitting.

"I'm sorry, I can't understand you for all that whistling. If you're not careful, you'll have every dog in the neighbourhood descending on you," he chirped.

Hiroto let out an enraged scream and brought the horse crop down again. It bit into Kakashi's flesh, seeming to get stuck there. Hiroto grunted with the effort as he yanked the whip free, eliciting a stuttering gasp from Kakashi.

"Kuma," the woman spoke up, "I don't think all this exertion is a very good idea in Hiroto's condition."

Hiroto whirled on her, bringing the crop around hard against her face.

The nurse flailed backwards, clutching her head.

"Who assh-ked, you bitshh!!" he screamed before laying into Kakashi's open back again.

And again.

…and again.

This process seemed never ending and soon witty comebacks were discarded in favor of quiet meditation as Kakashi focused on separating himself from the clawing sensation.

His back now felt slick and wet, each additional strike only spreading the pain until it seemed to wrap around his entire being.

Hiroto was only halted by Kuma's lightning fast hand, which struck out to stop the crop's progress.

Holding a hushing finger up, Kuma listened.

For a second the cell fell silent apart from the fat man's ragged breathing.

Kakashi, who bit down on his cheek to reorient himself, became immediately alert.

And there it was, the distant clash of weapons and muffled shouting.

"Hiroto, get back up to your room. We have intruders." Kuma instructed in a completely calm voice.

"But-" Hiroto started, quivering in rage.

"Go!" Kuma ordered.

The fat man roared his frustration as the nurse spun him around in the chair and began wheeling him away, now seemingly unfazed by the huge, red welt splitting her face in two.

Without sparing his prisoner a second glance, Kuma vanished on the spot.

Sensing he was alone again, Kakashi focused himself until he had only one task looming at the forefront of his mind. Ignoring the hot radiating pain of his lacerated back, he once again wrapped his wrists around the remaining restraint and started tugging.

* * *

"_R-A-A-A-S-E-N-N-G-A-N-N!!!"_

The bellowing cry sounded strong and clear above the thundering blood in Sakura's ears, her heart flipped at the familiar voice before she even had time to realize why or indeed _who_ was screaming it.

The old doctor's face dropped in puzzlement a split second before he was physically lifted into the air and thrown clear across the room. His back slammed with a bone jarring crunch into the painted brickwork. He dropped hard and crumpled, milky eyes wide and glassy, his chest open like a book and leaking dark fluid onto the stark white floor.

The gathered chakra still sputtered in his open palm, growing dimmer by the second.

Then, two grubby identical faces filled her vision, blue eyes sparkling with concern.

"Are you okay, Sakura-chan?" they asked in unison.

_Naruto._

A fat, single tear spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheek.

She wanted to reach out and touch him to make sure he wasn't a mirage. She wanted to be certain that the lovable idiot was indeed standing over her, open features twisted in worry, but her hands only twitched against the gurney's surface. She didn't have to wait long, though. His large hands enveloped hers, his thumbs rubbing circles across her palm, and the clone at his side gave a reassuring smile then _bamphed_ into thin air.

His voice dropped to a murmur. "Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?"

Summoning all her strength, Sakura slowly shook her head from side to side and tried to speak, but her tongue still felt heavy and unresponsive.

Breathing in deeply, she focused hard on isolating the paralyzing agent and speeding up her metabolism. She forced her chakra highway into action. Little by little, she could feel the lead weight in her head and limbs lessening as the compound started to break down. It wouldn't be too long before the drug wore off enough to allow her to move.

"You should pull her shorts up," came the smooth, even voice behind her.

Sai's head bobbed into view and gave her a pasty wide smile. "Hello, hag. Glad to see us?" he asked with the smallest flicker of mischief dancing in his eyes.

They both looked like hell. Hell, they both _smelled_ like hell! But at that moment, to Sakura, her boys were the most beautiful things she had ever laid eyes on. Relief flooded through her chest, an emotion so overwhelming that her body couldn't hold onto it. Soon hot tears were trailing wet lines down the side of her face in torrents. They were safe and they had come for her.

Her voice was quiet and shaky. The words were thick and difficult to form, but she managed to work her mouth around them anyway.

"T-t-took. you. l-l-ong. e-enough." she managed.

Naruto shot her a toothy grin and her mouth pulled up into a beaming smile.

"Sai, in t-the d-doctor's pockets," she said gesturing minutely towards the broken body slumped against the wall.

Sai walked over and rooted through the stained white lab coat, holding up two small scrolls and a small brown journal. "These?"

"Yes." she sighed as Sai pocketed the items. "They m-might be of some use."

Sai stood and walked swiftly to her side.

"H-here. H-help me get u-up." she said slowly, threading her weak fingers into Naruto's hands. "W-we have t-to get to Kakashi."

Naruto carefully brought her arm up to hang around his neck and lifted her onto her feet where she awkwardly fumbled to pull her shorts up.

"Where is he?"

Sakura's head snapped to regard the tall figure in the doorway, instantly feeling a rush of fear and adrenaline as she stared at the white and red marked cougar mask.

Sensing her rising panic, Sai, now supporting her other side, spoke up. "Don't be concerned. He's with us."

Apprehensively, Sakura allowed herself to be slowly steered towards the man. He was obviously taller than Kuma, his scalp was covered in a dark bandanna, and his rich, honey coloured hair hung loose to just below his chin, but even with this as reassurance, she couldn't quite shake her nervousness around the tall, masked figure.

Taking in her frightened expression, Genma sighed and pushed his mask up for a brief moment. He flashed her his best rakish grin and gave her a wink before sliding the mask back down into place.

Sakura's face was instantly drained of tension.

"Genma," she breathed, "I n-never thought I'd be so glad to see your smug mug."

"Is that any way to talk to your favourite patient and rescuer?"

"Eh? Genma?!" Naruto asked, pointing open mouthed.

The "anonymous" ANBU shrugged. "Captain Beaver's identity is already compromised and I'll be back on desk duty by the weekend, so I don't think it really matters anyway," he said with warmth. "Where's Kakashi being held?"

"In a barn or stable of some sort. It's big with a c-corrugated roof."

"Okay, I know where that is. Can you walk on your own?"

"No, not yet." she said, experimentally taking a wobbly step forward. The cold prickle was fading fast, but hadn't totally dissipated. Her limbs still felt like soggy ramen.

"Fine. You two help her and stick close. Let's go get your sensei."

They made their way through the low ceiling corridors of the manor's undercroft.

Genma led the way through the large basement network until they came to a flight of stairs leading up into the main house.

Naruto hoisted Sakura up onto his hip and took the stairs two at a time until they found themselves in an expansive kitchen.

It was a grand house, Sakura realized as they crept as quietly as possible and passed a grand ballroom and several smaller reception rooms. They were airy and light with beautifully corniced ceilings and thick, heavy curtains. She was surprised that a horrifically vulgar man like Nakamizu Hiroto actually seemed to have good taste when it came to furnishings.

She was brought out of her tired musings by the sound of sandals slapping against the parquet flooring.

Genma dropped into a low stance ahead of them and raised a hand to signal a stop.

Kenta flew around the corner, a large duffel bag held close against his chest.

Recognizing the man, Genma relaxed.

"Did you get everything?" Genma whispered.

"Yes, it's all here."

"What's he doing here?" Sakura scowled, her hand tightening around Naruto's.

"I collected your equipment. It's all there: headbands, uniforms, and weapons." Kenta said, looking around him hurriedly and turning his attention back to Genma. "I've intercepted my men or at least the ones loyal to me, but you still have the mercenaries, Hiroto's personal guard, and Kuma to deal with."

"Thank you." Genma nodded and took hold of the duffel.

Already Kenta was striding past them.

"Where are you going?" Sakura hissed back at him.

"To find my daughter." he said with a wry smile and then disappeared around the corner.

Staring after him in puzzlement, Sakura allowed herself to be pulled onward.

* * *

Yugao wiped her bloodied blade clean against the shirt of the dead mercenary against her feet. Stepping over his body, she climbed onto the cast iron railing of the balcony and dropped into the dense foliage below.

Tenzou appeared behind her as she landed, his own uniform flecked with blood.

"How many?"

"Three." she replied without turning.

"That makes a total of seven and leaves eight."

"There's a pocket of four overlooking the courtyard and it'll be light soon. It's only a matter of time before they realize their friends are missing and send up the alarm."

"We should take them out now and hope we attract enough attention for Cougar to locate Sakura and Kakashi."

"Eight on two. I don't like those odds much, Captain, especially not if the personal guard gets involved," she said, running a hand through her long hair in agitation.

"The mercenaries are bold, but undisciplined. They shouldn't be a problem. The personal guard looks like more of a challenge, although I am hoping their reaction time might be compromised when they realize Kenta's men are not there as back up."

"Still, that's at least fifteen on two and if this 'Kuma' gets involved? From what Kenta told us of his abilities, he isn't a shinobi to be taken lightly."

"Did you notice Sai looking all anxious when his name came up?" Tenzou mused, readying his katana.

"Anxious? How the hell can you tell with that kid?"

His voice rising slightly in amusement, Tenzou said, "I've known him a while. He may be subtle, but you do start to notice little nuances here and there after a while. I'm just hoping he won't become a liability in this situation."

"Do you think he might betray us? He is Root, after all. We'll have to keep an eye on him."

"It's not like you to be so pessimistic, Yugao." Tenzou chuckled.

"It's not like you to be so reckless, _Captain_." she countered haughtily.

Sighing, Tenzou started moving forward towards where their quarry stood unawares in the courtyard parapets.

"You're right. It's a crappy plan, but it's the only one we have, so sharpen up and knock them down before they have time to realize how crappy it is."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

The hairs on Sakura's arms prickled in response to the amount of chakra hanging in the air as her eyes roved the decimated courtyard.

An otter masked ANBU stood back-to-back against an owl masked ANBU. A circle made up of at least nine ninjas were coming at them, taking it in turns to wear them down. Three of the enemies had already fallen and their bodies were lying twisted and discarded in the grass and shrubbery. The Owl's long, purple hair whipped erratically around her mask and shoulders as she ducked and parried a blow from a large, studded club.

The tall, brown haired Otter who was favouring one leg considerably, threw up a solid, wooden wall between the Owl and her opponent just in time to stop the mace from gouging viciously down her side. Instead, the spiked weapon crashed loudly into the wooden blockade, sending up a shower of fat splinters.

"Yamato-teichou, look out!" Naruto shouted from across the quad.

Tenzou's katana rose to deflect the oncoming barrage of kunais, but his movement was slower than it should have been. One struck him hard in the shoulder, biting into a soft bundle of nerves. His hand went slack and the weapon dropped with a muted clatter.

"Shit! They're completely outnumbered!" Naruto cried, loosening his grip on Sakura's arm as she broke away.

She was moving forward towards her former team captain, her feet still a little clumsy and unsteady from the paralyzing agent.

Naruto appeared beside her.

"Time to even things up a little." he said, righting her with one hand as she stumbled. "Kage Bushin no Jutsu!"

Ten Narutos jumped forward into the fray, pushing and shoving to allow Sakura the space and cover to tend to their former team captain.

"Yamato-teichou. Are you alright?" Sakura cried urgently, dropping to her knees and pushing healing chakra immediately into his lame arm.

"Hey, Sakura-chan." Tenzou greeted tiredly, his eyes looking unfocused through the eyeholes of his mask.

"You're very low on chakra," she said with concern while feeding healing energy into the worst of his injuries.

"Is he able to fight?" came the rich feminine voice above her.

Sakura looked up to see the purple haired kunoichi standing guard over them, her head darting back and forth to pre-empt any further attacks.

"He'll be able to fight, but with minimal chakra."

Tenzou's good hand reached into his pocket to pull out a small, hard, black pill. He was just about to lift his mask to pop it into his mouth when Sakura's hand caught him.

"No, no more. I can tell you've already taken at least three of them today by the way your chakra field is jumping. Take one of these." Sakura said, reaching into her recently reacquired medic apron and pressing a large, brown pill into his hand.

He slipped it up under his mask and swallowed it around a dry heave.

"I know it tastes gross. I haven't quite sussed the recipe out yet, but it'll help rebalance your chakra and give you a burst of energy, but this isn't a normal soldier pill, so no big jutsus." she finished, squeezing his bicep.

"I'm so glad you're alive, Sakura." he said sincerely.

"I'm glad you're-" she didn't have time to finish her sentence.

The air bent around them in an unnatural way and then her face was suddenly seized, strong fingers clamping hard around her cheeks and jaw. She felt herself being lifted off the ground as her hands struggled against the thick wrist.

"What the-" Owl started in surprise as she noticed the masked figure who had appeared in their midst. Her voice was cut off by a sharp kick to the stomach and she reeled back, winded and clutching at her ribs.

"It's unfortunate that your friends interrupted the process." Kuma said, lifting the struggling body higher.

Sakura was screaming around his hand, her legs lashing out in front of her, her feet full of chakra in the hopes of landing a lucky blow.

"I suppose it doesn't matter. You would have only been an added bonus." he finished flatly, then hurled her across the courtyard.

Her body hit the ground, tumbling and rolling until she came to a stop.

Kuma was already advancing towards her, taking long, purposeful strides.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto shouted, diverting a handful of clones to intercept the Root ANBU.

Without breaking focus, Kuma pulled his blunt tipped tanto from its holster on his back and thrust it into the first two clones which dissipated with a smoky _bamph! _The next two dove for his legs, but Kuma vanished then reappeared behind them, slamming a foot down hard on their sprawled forms.

Sakura pulled herself to her feet while gathering chakra into her fist. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she slammed it into the soil. The ground split in two with an almighty groan, throwing earth and rubble into the air.

Through dusty clouds she saw Kuma stumble, his body tipping violently sideways into the fissure. She allowed herself a split second of praise, but then the same cruel fingers that had been previously around her face fisted into her hair, pulling her head back roughly. The tanto was already at her throat, the quick blade biting into her vulnerable flesh. She swallowed dryly against it, her vision full of pale, glaring porcelain.

The damp sucking sound of tanto sliding into flesh filled her ears.

A fine rain of hot blood pattered against her face as the tanto thrust upward.

Kuma stared blankly down at the blunt crimson covered tip protruding from his chest, his hand releasing its abusive hold on her scalp.

Sakura scuttled backwards across the ground, turning to face both her attacker and saviour.

"Hello, Senpai." Sai's inflectionless voice sang out as he kicked Kuma forward and withdrew the blade, wiping its dirtied metal against his long sleeve. "Sakura, go find Kakashi." he said, turning his gaze to meet hers.

Nodding, she turned and ran towards where Genma was pulling his senbon out of the face of a large, well muscled man.

Kuma, now back on his feet, watched Sai with his head cocked and his hand pressed tightly against the seeping wound on his chest. He gave no other outward indication that he was in pain.

"You could have killed me." Kuma stated blandly.

"Yes, I suppose I could have."

"Hello, Sumiiro." Kuma said after a long silence.

Sai smiled. "Nobody has called me that for a very long time, Senpai."

* * *

"What do you think they're talking about?" Genma asked, pulling Sakura along with him by the arm.

_Hello, Senpai…_

"I don't know." she said anxiously as they navigated the uneven, body strewn courtyard while casting fearful glances back at where Sai and Kuma were conversing. Their weapons were lowered and they seemed to be completely ignoring the chaos erupting around them.

"Hm." was Genma's only response as they vaulted over the high wall.

They made it through to the main gardens of the manor with little resistance, the majority of the ninja having already flocked to the commotion in the courtyard. They continued down a dirt track to where the grounds opened up into grassy pastures. Nestled between several small brick outbuildings stood a large barn, its corrugated roof looking like a black fan in the dawning light.

"That's it." Sakura breathed, moving off at a brisk trot.

"Do you have enough chakra to heal him if he's seriously injured?"

"Yes." she said firmly, not averting her gaze from the large, open double doorway which was steadily drawing closer.

* * *

The heavy chains trailing behind him cut clean lines through the thin layer of muck and manure, exposing the light gray concrete underneath.

As Kakashi staggered through the length of the stables, it felt as though he were walking through the carcass of a great mythical creature. Staring up with both eyes at the interlocking beams above him, he thought they really did look like huge arching ribs.

_The belly of the beast, _he thought, recalling an old sailor's story he had once heard along the borders of Mizu.

_A man trapped in the stomach of a whale..._

He wished it would just swallow him whole.

His Sharingan eye pulsed and ached, the chakra collar and cuffs temporarily blocking off his chakra highway so that the eye was firing on its own small reserves. It flickered like a lighter between red and black, skipped like a scratched record between slow and fast.

The thirty meter walk from his cell to the massive double doors ahead seemed to be taking a lifetime, his body on the verge of non-compliance.

Had he really only been here a few short hours? It felt like days, days since Sakura had been taken.

The wave of guilt that crashed over him was enough to halt his progress. He stood in the doorways shadow, his head hung low, eyes closed against the dawn.

"Kakashi?"

"Mmm?" he replied as if to himself.

Sakura frowned, tentatively stepping towards him. Her initial elation at seeing him alive and on his feet drained away as she took in his despondent body language and dishevelled appearance: his wrists were raw and inflamed from where the cuffs had cut into the tissue, his throat looked to be in much the same state, his hummed acknowledgment was croaky and hoarse.

The four chains leading from his ankles and wrists snaked behind him, a large chunk of brickwork still attached to the other end of one of them. One of his shoulders looked higher set than usual, popping upward and out of alignment with his collarbone. She winced as she realized he'd dislocated it.

Without another word, she closed the distance between them, pressing her hands against his chest and sending out tendrils of soothing chakra to diagnose the damage.

The sensation of cool pressure coursing through his highway caused him to open his eyes and stare down at her: her small, slim hands threading chakra into his system, her face pinched in concentration as she worked...Realization slowly rose to the surface.

"You're here?" he asked, his voice quiet and very, very deep.

"Huh?" she asked, meeting his mismatched gaze with confusion. "Of course I'm here, silly." she said, smiling broadly and trying to blink back the tears brimming along her lower eyelids.

"You're hurt." he said, eyebrows knitting together.

His hand came up without hesitation to trace the dark oval marks marring the pale skin along her jaw and cheekbones, moving down to inspect the shallow cut on her throat.

"It's nothing." she said, feigning casualness to disguise the fact that her pulse was thundering under his touch. "It's nothing." she repeated as if trying to assure herself.

The chains tinkled as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush against his body and she yelped at the unexpected contact. In a moment of emotional vulnerability, he allowed himself to breathe her in: the shampoo, the sweat, the blood.

_All of it._

He brushed his masked lips against her forehead and murmured softly into her hair, "I was scared. I was scared."

"I know. Me, too." she hummed back against his chest, knowing her tears were soaking through and making him wet.

"Ahem."

They both lifted their heads, Kakashi's hands dropping slowly back to their sides as he blinked dumbly towards the source of the noise.

Genma's mask was pushed up as he reclined against the wall, senbon perched between lips that were pulled into a large, lopsided grin. His eyebrows waggled suggestively. "Don't want to break this lovely reunion up, but we do have a mission to complete, bedraggled teammates to rescue, _and_ a village crisis to avert. I don't think we'll get any of that done with Kakashi standing and bleeding to death in his underwear, ne?"

Sakura leaped back as if scolded, letting out an embarrassed squeak.

Kakashi, finally becoming entirely alert, tried desperately to stem the light pink blush that was blooming above his mask.

"I guess I am feeling a little lightheaded…and err…naked." he said, shrugging a little and wishing his boxers or black tank top had pockets he could stuff his hands into.

"Well, all's good 'cuz I brought you clothes and a nice little medic." Genma said smirking.

"About time you did something nice for me." Kakashi grumbled playfully and eased himself onto the ground where Sakura quickly knelt and began cleaning his wounds.

"Kakashi?"

"Yeah, Genma?"

"The boys are fine. Well, they were fine when I last saw them."

The sigh Kakashi released was loud and heartfelt. "That's good. That's really, really good."

The three lapsed into silence as Sakura worked, swabbing the huge lacerations on the Copy Nin's back with antiseptic and wiping down the inflamed tissue around his wrists, ankles, and throat.

Genma joined them, using his chewed senbon to pick the locks on the chakra cuffs and collar. Instantly, Kakashi's chakra highway flared back to life.

"Here, take this." Sakura instructed, passing him a blood replenishing pill.

The Copy Nin did as he was told and popped it in his mouth, chewing the bitter substance reluctantly.

"I'm afraid dislocated shoulders have to be done the old fashioned way." Genma said without even a hint of remorse.

With one sharp tug and snap, the shoulder settled back into its proper alignment.

"You arsehole." Kakashi grunted sorely.

"Now, now…"

"Genma?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming."

Smiling down at his former team captain, he slapped the mask back down over his face.

"What are friends for?"


	18. Chapter 17: Bloodsport for all

_AN: Welcome to the first grammatically glorious, fantastic, BETA'D chapter of PorcOrch! Yes that's right, Beta'd! woo! The wonderful __**Moderndayportia**__ has agreed to lend me her considerable talents as a Beta-reader for this fic, so I will hopefully be abusing her skills for many chapters to come…so a huge thank you to her for her patience, support and guidance. _

_Thank you to reviewers and favourite-ers alike, I really hope you enjoy this chapter, it's a nice long one too! _

_

* * *

  
_

**Chapter 17: Bloodsport For All**

_A strong grip around his neck. _

_Bony. Unbreakable. _

_The cold water fills his nose, clawing like fire through his lungs. No matter how much he tries to suppress the urge, his body thrashes and twists in a futile attempt at escape. The long fingers pincered around the nape of his neck tighten and push him down further. Bubbles of precious oxygen slide past his face like a fleeting caress as they travel upward, a gentle ghosting touch across his cheeks that feels foreign rather that reassuring. He wills himself to be still, tries to force the fear and panic back into its box. _

_But it's difficult._

_Impossible. _

_How do you defend against a natural instinct? He doesn't understand. A patchwork of inky green is starting to lace its way across the back of his eyelids and the raging fire in his lungs is starting to dull to a numb prickling. His own hands start to slip from the lip of the barrel as his limbs begin losing their rigidity. _

_Only then is he pulled up._

_The vice-like grip shifting to knot into his hair, the scoring pain of fingernails dragging across his scalp helps him focus, and when his face finally breaks free of the surface, he sucks air in greedily between spluttering coughs. _

"_Who are you?" a low voice asks._

_Blinking fast to dispel the cloudy blanket shrouding his vision, he chokes out the last of the water before his flushed face hardens into a flawless slate of marble, unblinking and unmoving, except for the minute shifting of his thin, pale lips._

"_I am no one," he replies softly, detached and wholly composed._

"_What are you?"_

"_I am Sumiiro."_

"_This is your name?"_

"_No. My weapon." _

"_Elaborate."_

"_I am a Tabula Rasa*," he starts. "I am everything I am asked to be and nothing more. I am whatever my master needs. I am whatever skills and services I can offer."_

_The figure behind him releases the grip on his hair._

"_Stand. Face me," the voice commands. _

_Without hesitation he does as he is told and waits as the masked man looks him over appraisingly. _

"_You are improving," Kuma says flatly. This is not said as praise or out of kindness, but simply as a statement of fact._

_Sumiiro feels no pride or warmth about his development. He only nods once in acknowledgement._

"…_but you need to understand that you can't stop the pain. It's not about stopping it, it's about accepting it. Once you stop fighting pain and start embracing it, you'll really see a difference. Pain will always be pain, but it doesn't have to hurt."_

"_Will that be all sempai? I have three hours of Kata to run through."_

"_You understand why you were bought here?"_

"_I went to visit Shin in the infirmary without permission." This is just another simple fact, and he answers immediately without fear or remorse. Although to some the experience of being repeatedly half-drowned would be considered a punishment, to Sumiiro it is just a reinforcement of his training._

"_That's correct. What was your motivation?"_

_Sumiiro pauses to consider his answer, not knowing how to communicate such a desire and aware that even if he could articulate it, he wouldn't really comprehend it._

"_Shin was in my team for the next mission. I was merely assessing his condition to confirm whether a replacement would be needed," he says instead._

"_Are you worried about his condition?"_

"_Worried? I do not understand," Sumiiro replies._

"_Did you experience fear when you found out that Shin was ill?"_

"_No." _

_Fear is something he does understand because it walks hand in hand with pain. Pain, which is purely physical in its manifestation. _

_Fear - a natural reaction to external stimulus- is a feeling that is slowly being chiselled away in sessions such as this. _

"_It has been reported that he asked for you during surgery. That he referred to you as '__brother__' when he was feeling __scared__ and __alone__." _

_The words are __just__ words, but Sumiiro winces ever so slightly at the word 'brother'. To the casual observer a tiny stilling of the eyes on an already unnaturally rigid face wouldn't even register. But Kuma is not a casual observer, and although his student is very adept at shutting off his emotions, he is not quite good enough. They may be tiny little ripples across the surface of a placid lake, but Kuma knows that with the right amount of pressure even tiny ripples can turn into big waves._

"_Towel yourself down. We have an hour of electroshock." _

_Yes. Fear is a response to pain, an instinctive reaction driven by the body's need to protect itself. An impulse as normal as blinking. _

_Fight or flight. _

_As Sumiiro calmly follows his senpai towards the chair with humming chrome pads and trailing wires he feels nothing._

_*_

The memory was aggressively vivid and the latest in a long list of _painful_ recollections that the presence of his former senpai had sparked in Sai.

Kuma.

Just the name alone had caused a small ribbon of adrenaline to wind itself tightly around his lungs when Kenta explained the situation. Sai had not been prepared for the strange swirl of emotion that rose so unexpectedly, and only by utilising his training to the fullest had he managed to force the sensation back down into the deep pit of his stomach. Yet, seeing the man in the flesh was another story.

The ANBU mask Kuma wore was his only recognizable characteristic: he was tall, but not oddly so, his body muscled in a lean, sinewy way but with enough bulk to make him appear neither too slight nor too built, his hair colour a nondescript mousy brown cropped close to the scalp. He was completely forgettable, just like every good ANBU soldier should be. The mask, though, could belong to no one else, because to Sai the red painted tear marks running down its cheeks and the grisly, toothy grin were the features that made up Kuma's face, features that stirred up more than just memories. He could paint that 'face' with his eyes closed.

"My name is Sai now," he answered Kuma's questioning look quietly, but his words easily travelled the short distance between them.

"Name?" Kuma asked, cocking his head curiously.

"Yes. It is what my friends call me."

"…Friends?" Kuma made a grunting sound in the back of his throat. "Danzo-sama has clearly kept you in the field too long."

"Perhaps," Sai responded with a vague close-eyed smile, his hands trembling minutely.

This did not go unnoticed by Kuma though, who looked at the quivering edge of Sai's tanto with interest.

"You're feeling," his silken voice declared.

Sai's grip tightened around the carved ebony handle and the blade stilled completely, flashing liquid bright and orange in the dawning light.

Yes, he was feeling. Probably more than he had ever felt. A great swell of muddy emotion was surging up his throat, threatening to overflow.

There were so many things he wanted to say, and so many things he wanted to ask, but he knew if he opened his mouth all that would come out would be a chaotic, garbled scream. Instead, he ground his teeth together inaudibly and allowed his sooty eyelashes to flutter closed for the briefest of moments.

This was the man that trained him.

This was the man that _tortured_ him.

This was the man that had taken away his ability to think for himself, had taken away his memories, had taken away his first strong bond.

But this was also the man that had taken away pain and fear and confusion. Since joining Team Kakashi, Sai had formed new bonds to replace the cavernous loss of his adopted brother. He now had people that he cared about strongly: Naruto and Sakura. He had a growing list of friendships with the rest of his peers and a healthy respect for his senpai, Yamato and Kakashi. He had his own motivations and goals now too: to ensure the safety of these 'precious people' and to one day help reunite his team with their lost member. He had been given more in the last year and a half by those people than what had been taken from him in the first place.

But all this was riddled with deep uncertainty, social awkwardness, an inability to understand why his teammates rolled their eyes in exasperation at him so often, or the way they looked at him with pinched eyebrows and tight half-smiles…the way they looked at him with _pity._

Sai understood more than they thought he did.

Kuma, two dimensional, unmovable and fearless, represented a life that Sai could safely say he missed at times. In Root there had been no moral compass to lead him away from his objectives, no messy emotion, no pity, just the drive to complete his missions and unquestioning loyalty toward his superiors.

"It's weak," Kuma's cool breath against his ear bought Sai quickly out of his introspection in an instant. He must have still been suffering the after effects of a concussion.

"SAI! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Naruto's scream rang out across the debris strewn courtyard. His cerulean eyes fixed on Sai's, swimming with panic.

Naruto was so intently focused on the scene before him that he missed the gnarled club swinging towards his head. Yugao's katana severed it in two just before it could make contact, and Sai winced at the near miss. Naruto was running towards him then, snarling and toothy as Kuma's tanto was laid flat against Sai's shoulder, its blade cold and biting against his throat.

"It is weak," Sai confirmed, blinking slowly.

Naruto was almost upon them, still screaming obscenities, his fist raised and aimed toward Kuma's face.

"…but," Sai continued almost wistfully, "I find I quite like it."

"So what will you do, Sumiiro?"

"I think I'd like to test my mettle against you senpai, just to see how weak I truly am," Sai replied pleasantly, his smile broadening.

"Then let's take this somewhere more private."

Kuma's free hand caught Sai's wrist and the air folded down around them. Naruto stumbled into empty space and looked around wildly for his missing teammate.

* * *

Tenzou's feet slapped loudly against the terracotta tiles of the manor's roof, their rhythm staggered and uneven from exhaustion. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; in his chakra-drained state he knew that he was largely a hindrance to his currently more able team, and the grand roof, three storeys up, had looked like the perfect vantage point from which to pick off the stragglers and keep a tactical eye on the battlefield. That was before he realised that Nakamizu's personal guard were in fact double the number they had initially calculated and that three of them had decided to follow him as he picked his way up the balcony's and gutters toward the red-tiered roof.

A stream of freezing water smashed into the brick chimney he had ducked behind, causing it to explode outward in a soggy rain of rubble. Tenzou cursed loudly as the water-slicked tiles gave out under his feet, sliding down like dominoes toward the large drop. Charging the last vestiges of his chakra into his feet, he pushed up and leapt toward another chimneystack, heaving himself upward with straining arms. He sprinted along the precipice, weaving in and out of the tall smoking funnels and hoping like hell that he wouldn't fall.

With a tired groan he realized that he had finally run out of places to hide. Three storeys below him ornamental gardens sprawled into the distance. Sharp igneous rocks lining a manmade waterfall jutted upward from amongst a hundred species of grass and bamboo. Delicate pink water lilies looked up temptingly from a huge rippling basin, and the glinting bodies of large, brightly patterned koi moved fluidly though the plant life close to the waters surface.

Would jumping down without chakra to soften his fall really hurt that much?

Yes. Yes it would, he concluded, once more running his eyes over the toothy surface regretfully.

His heels hanging over the ledge, Tenzou turned to face his pursuers. The three renegade Taki-nin approached him cautiously, fanning out to block any route back the way he had come. Their faces were tense, their stances nervously combative, and it was almost embarrassing for Tenzou, who stood with shoulders slumped and his hands wrapped firmly around twin kunai. They were clearly chuunin, perhaps tokubetsu jounin at a push. Their form was sloppy, their tactics predictable, their water jutsu mediocre in both rank and power.

He knew that his only chance was to get close enough to utilise taijutsu and pray that his reaction time was still sharp enough to best them with a simple melee offensive.

It didn't look likely, however, as all three men hung back and put their hands together in perfect synchronization.

_Tiger, Dog, Monkey, Snake, Bird…_

Tenzou rolled his eyes. How unoriginal.

He had never really put much thought into how he would die, but he had offhandedly hoped it would be at the hands of a great enemy warrior, or while asleep in bed at the over-ripe age of eighty-two.

However, Tenzou had never envisioned dying at the hands of three unskilled, _boring_ ninja like the ones who were about to throw him to his doom using a water technique that he used to water his house plants.

How embarrassing.

Three jets of water burst from their mouths, arching up into the yellowing sky. Tenzou watched their progress as they reached the zenith and then started the inevitable race downward towards his position. For what felt like the hundredth time, he tried to call chakra into his feet, his legs, his hands, his arms, _anywhere, _but his depleted stores just crackled and sparked uselessly under his skin. He realised with a detached kind of acceptance that, short of a miracle, he would die within the next two seconds.

"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet!"

An open mouthed dragon reared up like a tower behind Tenzou, swallowing the three thin streams in its cavernous mouth before, foaming and thrashing, it plummeted down toward the three enemy nin. One had the foresight to drop his hands and leap backwards towards a higher portion of roof, the other two weren't so lucky and the tidal force of the dragon swallowed them up, dragging their shock-rigid bodies and a rain of terracotta tiles over the roof's edge.

"Maa, now's really not the time to be taking a shower is it Tenzou?" Kakashi's lightly chiding voice whispered close to his ear.

Tenzou, to his credit, managed not to fall off the roof in shock and instead only turned to meet Kakashi with a wide, grateful smile.

"Nice to see you in one piece Senpai," he responded before quirking his head to the now empty basin beneath then, "although it seems a shame to destroy such a lovely water-feature, some of those koi must have been at least fifteen years old."

"I'm sure buying new fish will be the last thing on Nakamizu's mind when we're done with him," Sakura's voice chirped as she hauled herself over the edge of the chimney and moved to stand next to her two sensei.

"What are we going to do about him?" Tenzou inquired, pointing to the stumbling figure of the last of Nakamizu's personal guard. The man in question was shooting panicked glances over his shoulder as he slipped and slid over the uneven roofing, slowly but surely putting as much distance as possible between him and the three figures regarding him coolly from the lowest point of the rooftop.

"I'd say Genma has it covered," Sakura calmly replied as all three watched the fleeing enemy freeze mid-stride and then crumple backwards at an awkward angle, four glinting senbon protruding from one point in his throat.

A figure appeared atop an adjacent chimney and waved cheerfully at them.

"Did you see how _sexy_ that aim was!" he called enthusiastically.

All three of them cringed.

"His word choice never ceases to amaze me," Tenzou muttered tiredly.

"Agreed," Sakura and Kakashi responded in unison.

Down in the courtyard they could easily distinguish Naruto standing with a handful of clones near Yugao. They were still outnumbered, and it was obvious that their energy was flagging as they were pushed slowly towards the manor walls by the half dozen ninja still fighting. Yugao was clearly favouring one leg, her katana dipping lower than her perfect form would usually allow, and Naruto's clones, all looking bruised and filthy, were guarding her in a semi-circle with kunai drawn and ready.

"I should help them," Sakura said tightly, readying herself for the long jump down.

"Kakashi and I can track down Nakamizu," Genma called across to them. "If that's alright with you Captain," he addressed Tenzou tentatively, unsure of what he was _actually_ supposed to call him.

"What about Kuma?" Kakashi asked.

"Sai's with him," Tenzou started, "but I think we should get to them as soon as possible. Something was off about that confrontation."

"Aside from them chatting away like a couple of bosom-buddies?" snorted Genma.

The group fell into a brief worried silence until Sakura broke it.

"Sai's our friend. He won't betray us," she sounded completely sure, her voice strong and a little hostile.

Tenzou nodded and paced towards Sakura. "You'll have to help me down," he mumbled with a faint blush.

The shadow across her face broke and Sakura beamed a hundred kilowatt smile before winking playfully and taking hold of his arm. "Aww, Yamato-sensei, you poor baby."

"Sakura…" Kakashi looked tense, his gaze restlessly shifting between her and the courtyard, his visible eye tight with a mix of emotion: worry, concern, perhaps irritation.

"I'll be fine Kaka-sensei. Go pummel that fat bastard for me."

Despite the inordinate amount of bad luck they'd had on this mission, Kakashi knew that Sakura could handle a group of ragtag, ill trained rogue ninja, but that didn't stymie the uncomfortable build up of tension simmering along his shoulders. After all they'd been through in the past few hours he didn't want to let her out of his sight. He was aware that it was a completely irrational and unprofessional reaction.

The Copy-nin sighed, his shoulders heaving just a little before they shifted back into an apathetic slope.

"Be careful," he grumbled before stepping into empty space and disappearing from sight. She tightened her grip on Tenzou's arm and tried to ignore the clearly incredulous look Genma sent her way. Even with the ANBU mask on she could tell that his eyebrows were touching his hairline.

"Good luck." She muttered, feeling a little embarrassed and not really knowing why.

With blue chakra bubbling across the soles of her feet she threw herself and her incapacitated sensei off the ledge.

* * *

Kuma and Sai snapped back into existence inside a large circular ballroom, Sai staggering to put as much distance between them as possible. It might have been the lingering concussion or perhaps just the speed at which they had travelled, but he felt nauseatingly light-headed and unsteady on his feet. Stumbling backward he braced himself against the highly polished surface of a grand piano. The keys clunked tunelessly as his back hit them and the discordant sound echoed around the empty expanse of the room, as did the noise of Kuma's clapping footfalls against the highly polished flooring as he walked slowly toward Sai, his tanto poised at a perfect forty-five degree angle from his body.

"What do you hope to achieve by killing me?" Kuma questioned as Sai straightened.

"The safety of my friends. The locations of your sleeper agents within Konoha's walls."

"Why would you want to disrupt this plan? In the short term it may seem as though I am stretching the parameters of my mission, but in the long term it will lead to Danzo's inauguration as Hokage. Which is, after all, our mission."

"Our mission first and foremost is the protection of Konoha. Or have you forgotten that?"

"Konoha will be stronger than ever, free from softness and vulnerability. It will become hard and sharp under Danzo, transforming Konoha's fabled will of fire into a burning lance that will cut through our enemies."

"The will of fire burns brightly within Konoha's people because of the compassion and bonds they share. If your mission succeeds, there will be no Konoha."

"A new leader for a new village. A blank slate; like me, like you. It is a necessary step."

Sai considered this as Kuma approached, his fine dark eyebrows pinching slightly. He understood the logic, he really did, and part of him really _wanted_ to return to what he had been before, wanted that blank slate…and that desire demonstrated how far he had fallen. He shouldn't _want_ anything. If he yielded to Kuma, the confusion and self-doubt would vanish and Sai could go back to a world where paintings didn't need titles, where shinobi didn't need friends, where rules couldn't be twisted or broken or misinterpreted.

A blank slate; like me, like you…

"No. Not like me." Sai declared, jerking his chin up defiantly and surging forward.

* * *

Genma whistled long and low through his teeth as he followed Kakashi out of the infirmary, a large converted bedroom with floor to ceiling windows and intricate decorative cornicing, and upstairs into the main house, away from the beeping machines and flickering monitors of the manor's undercroft.

The coppery smell of blood invaded their nostrils before Kakashi had even pushed open the heavy oak doors. In the centre of the room a young women dressed in a nurses uniform laid doll-like and broken on the floor. The light beginning to filter into the room reflected brightly off the highly polished floor and the dark puddle spreading slowly around the woman's body.

"Shit," Genma growled.

Kakashi strode forward and used the blunt end of a kunai to push up the girl's too-short skirt.

"She's one of Kuma's guinea pigs," he said, nodding towards the brown, swirling orchid tattoo sitting high on her hip. "Her spinal column has been severed. The entry wound is amateur and desperate. And see these tears in the skin? Probably done with a serrated edge, an improvised weapon…a steak knife perhaps?"

"So, a non-shinobi attacker."

"Nakamizu. I'm guessing that he didn't feel like taking his meds," Kakashi quipped with a dry chuckle.

"…that's not funny."

"No. It's not. He probably heard all the commotion and tried to leave…I am assuming that the nurse here didn't agree with him and he took her out. She didn't even see it coming"

"So where is he now?"

"Hmm, foreign ninja invade your home and have evidence that could get you locked up as a traitor for the next couple of decades and then executed…and I'm guessing even Taki would be a little horrified to find out the depths of Nakamizu's involvement in crimes against humanity. What would you do in his position?"

"Well, I'd leave the country…but I'm guessing he's going to try and head back into central Taki and spin the blame on us…"

Kakashi only nodded grimly. "Yes, the terrible tale of a political figure that was tortured, brutalised, and forced to cooperate with rogue forces from Konoha."

"They'll never buy it."

"Willing to bet? Nakamizu is a highly valued member of the community, providing the country and its neighbours with entertainment and tourism, in other words money, an economy Taki's small shinobi force cannot provide. We aren't even supposed to be here. This mission was never approved officially with the Taki council. The only missive Tsunade sent was a request for access to the city for educational purposes. We are trespassing, and what's worse is that Kuma, one of our own, has been experimenting on Taki's civilians."

"This could be internationally disastrous. We need to find him now!"

Before the words were out of Genma's mouth Kakashi had already dragged a bloody thumb across his summoning scroll. The room erupted with the sound of baying dogs. Sitting atop the formidably large head of Bull, Kakashi's largest nin-dog Pakkun blinked sleepily at Kakashi and Genma before further wrinkling up his face and wheezing like an accordion at the sight and stench of dead girl lying on the floor.

"Isn't it a bit early for that Boss?" he chuffed with disdain.

Kakashi plucked up a scrap of bloodied bandage from a settee and held it out for his pack to sniff at before striding over to one of the large plate glass windows and throwing it wide open.

"The first dog to find and incapacitate the target before he gets into the city will get a month's worth of homemade doggy biscuits. It shouldn't be too hard; he's an unhealthy civilian with questionable hygiene who will be slowed down further by injury."

Eight pairs of eyes stared back with glassy anticipation before chaos erupted.

"Yes Boss!" Pakkun yelped over the enthusiastic chorus of barks and yaps, and, as one, the eight dogs turned and sprinted to the window before leaping out.

Genma quirked an intrigued eyebrow at Kakashi. "Homemade doggy biscuits?"

"I like cooking…everyone has a hobby," he replied concisely before jumping after his pack.

* * *

The blades screamed as they collided, a reedy wail that increased in pitch as one fine edge of steel travelled the length of the other. With a quick semi circular motion Sai readjusted his grip and knocked the strike aside, stepping neatly back into a defensive form. He was holding his own. Barely. The strike he had inflicted on Kuma earlier in the courtyard had done nothing to slow or hinder the man.

"How many agents do you have inside Konoha?"

"Four," Kuma answered helpfully.

To make matters worse, Kuma was an impressive swordsman, agile and experienced. In all honestly Sai knew it was experience that he couldn't hope to match, even without Kuma's ability to teleport away with no warning. Every lunge he made was blocked, every thrust he felt sure would hit was met with thin air as Kuma vanished, only to reappear a split second later. Sai ran through the situation with analytical coolness as he tried to stay one step ahead of his opponent, pushing the gut clenching adrenaline down until he was swathed in a blanket of calm detachment.

"When will they attack?"

"It really depends."

"On what?"

The blade swung towards him again, flashing white as it arched forward.

He spun neatly to the side, knocking the weapon back and spinning to thrust into the defenceless opening the parry had left. But Kuma was gone, his voice floating disembodied through the air.

"_You're not concentrating Sumiiro_."

There was an odd jarring at Sai's side and then the strange tugging sensation of the blade being recovered. There was no pain, not yet, but the spreading wetness against his uniform let him know he'd been hit. He barely saw the heel of Kuma's foot come around before it collided solidly with his jaw, exploding lights across his vision and throwing him clean over the piano.

"You're leading with your left too much and leaving yourself wide open," Kuma lectured.

"Thank you for the pointer senpai," the gurgling rattle of Sai's next inhalation sounded disturbingly weak as he pulled himself awkwardly up onto a crouch behind the large instrument. He needed to exploit every advantage he had over his opponent and quickly because with these wounds…

"You have a punctured lung. You will only be able to continue fighting at maximum capacity for another eight minutes before you breathing becomes too laboured. The blood loss will start to affect you within fifteen."

Sai stood slowly, one hand cradling the open wound at his side. "Eight minutes?" he repeated with a smile. He took a deep steadying breath, ignoring the sudden flare of scorching heat in his side, and then vaulted over the piano to meet Kuma with a long downward sweep. Again the blades howled as they met. Sai's edge was scant centimetres from Kuma's masked face when he twisted his wrist to deflect, gripping Sai's arm with bruising force and driving his own tanto up beneath Sai's ribs.

The blade cut through flesh and muscle, burrowing in right up to the hilt.

Sai's short, high gasp sounded out loudly in the hollow expanse of the room, his mouth opening wide in a silent cry as the sharp edge curved up through his body.

His eyes rolled fully back into his head and his body fell limp in Kuma's grasp.

"Weak," Kuma sighed while twisting the blade.

"Really?" Sai's laboured voice asked as he emerged from behind the piano.

Kuma's gaze shifted disbelievingly between the student walking towards him and the grinning body hanging in his hands…

…Which promptly exploded into thick black ink, splattering across Kuma's mask and torso.

Hissing in shock, Kuma leapt backwards, dragging his sleeve across his mask's eye slits to try and clear them of ink.

"A Clone."

"Yes. A _friend_ of mine taught me some inventive uses for them."

Sai bought his foot down hard against the floor, and Kuma instinctively spun toward the sound, bring his tanto up reflexively in front of his obscured vision. The first of Sai's shuriken went wide but the second hit the mark, imbedding itself deep into Kuma's thigh. Kuma stumbled slightly against the impact, but in the next second disappeared.

"You'll have to do better than genin-level distraction techniques," Kuma taunted silkily by Sai's ear, thrusting his fingers deep into the weeping wound at his side.

The scream that came from Sai's mouth sounded alien to his own ears. Kuma's fingers curved cruelly upward and around his bruised rib and tugged viciously. The blood pumped warm and fast onto the floor as Sai sagged brokenly to his knees, pain lancing with electric intensity through his chest.

"Pain," whispered Kuma, digging his blood soaked digits in deeper.

"…Fear," he continued, finally releasing his grip and kicking his victim brutally to the ground.

"…Weakness."

Sai caught the kick aimed for his ribs with a shaking gloved hand, sweeping his legs in an attempt to knock his opponent to the floor. Kuma vanished, flickering back into existence to stamp hard on the outstretched limb. The bone broke with an echoing snap, eliciting another gargled scream from Sai.

"You can't best me until you let go of these things," Kuma's voice sang eerily in the ballroom as he flickered in and out of existence in quick secession, darting around Sai's prone form with dizzying speed.

Chocking down on the agonised screams clawing at his throat, Sai tightened his grip on his tanto, which shook with the tremors wracking his body.

"_Friends…"_ Kuma's voice seemed to come from all around him, shifting and implacable.

Sai calmed his breathing and lapsed with practiced ease into deep meditative concentration.

"_Feelings_."

He could feel the air shifting now, chakra shifting and distorting.

"_Unnecessary things…_"

Kuma was moving faster, the energy circling and twisting all around him, but Sai's focus was needle sharp.

"_Things that blind you. Things that…"_

The sentence hung in the air unfinished. The tanto left Sai's grip like a whisper, barely announcing its presence as it spun to hit its mark dead centre. The short, flat-tipped blade sung out its impact as it was buried deep into Kuma's throat. He crumpled quickly to the hard floor.

Sighing in tired relief Sai dragged himself slowly to where Kuma lay gasping, a steady stream of blood weeping from under the ink splattered mask. Pulling himself up into a sitting position alongside his former senpai, Sai rested his chin on one knee and stared down at the body next to him. Kuma was still breathing, but it was a strained bubbling sound, which was growing shallower by the second.

"I don't think I'm blind anymore, I think that I am finally seeing things in colour…" Sai started softly, clutching his side as the veil of adrenaline dispersed too quickly, leaving only waves of nauseating pain. "Some of what I've seen is vulgar and ugly, but it's also rich… full of life and personality and I'm starting to understand it…to feel it. I feel _mortal_ now and that makes me weak…but it also makes me strong." Sai snorted a little at that, a tight ironic grunt that sounded bizarre even to him. "Maybe I really did hit my head too hard earlier." Then after a short pause he continued. "This life is confusing and contradictory, but I like it," he hummed happily.

"H-h-how?" Kuma's ragged voice grated through the mask.

"The ink on your mask and chest was imbued with my chakra, which meant I could track you even while you moved through space. It took me a while to adjust to your speed, but to be honest, this fight was over the second you detonated my clone. You see, I would have never thought of that while under Roots complete influence. The idea of letting you land potentially fatal blows in order to set up that scenario and then wait for an opportunity to put my plan into practice would have been senseless to me. Two years ago I would have fought you cleanly and professionally, and then I would have died."

"…Sumiiro…"

A warm and all encompassing exhaustion seemed to wash over Sai, his eyelids feeling suddenly impossibly heavy.

"Are you really never scared senpai…never? Even when dying?"

But Kuma didn't respond, the staggered rise and fall of his chest had stilled completely.

"It's fine senpai…I'm sometimes scared too," Sai whispered, blinking against the gathering wetness around his eyes. Shifting his forehead onto his knee he finally allowed them to close.

* * *

The forest surrounding the Nakamizu estate was dense and unkempt; it kept his lands secluded from the hustle and bustle of Taki, acting like a fortified wall to keep intruders and prying eyes out. The canopy was high, comprised of ancient evergreens, gnarled oaks, and spiky spruces with trunks as wide as three men. The trees allowed only sporadic puddles of the morning sunlight to filter down into the thick foliage, casting the forest floor in a patchwork of black shadow and golden dapple. The only maintained road out of his lands just happened to be through the courtyard and out of the main gates…and he was not planning to walk brazenly through the wide-open space in front of a whole shooting gallery of enemy nin.

For the thousandth time he found himself spitting Kuma's name through the tight bandages around his face as his foot caught an exposed root, throwing him forward into a crumbly, damp wall of moss and bark. Hiroto leaned heavily against the rotten trunk, panting hard and pulling at the bandages to loosen them, sucking a greedy breath into his straining lungs. The air under the canopy was musty with the earthy scent of damp soil and decaying vegetation, and already the bottoms of his velvet robes were soaked through with dew and peat, making them heavy and cold. That stupid Konoha bastard just _had _to involve him in this ridiculous pet project, and now his home was being attacked, his staff killed and his reputation and life had been thrown into serious jeopardy. He just hoped to hell that by the time he got to Taki they'd all have killed each other and there would be no witnesses to contradict his story. And if there were, well, he'd have to come up with something quick…

If there was one thing Nakamizu Hiroto was brilliant at it was spinning a tale, a gift honed in even the most amateur politician.

His face was starting to throb again, bringing with it what promised to be one almighty tension headache. Shadows were pulsing and shifting around his periphery making him jump at things that weren't there. Hiroto rubbed his bandaged temples soothingly, cursing as he pushed himself off the tree and deeper into the undergrowth, swatting away the swarms of mosquitoes hovering around his face and hacking away at the waist high ferns with the bone-saw he'd taken from the infirmary.

The crisp snap of a twig breaking somewhere behind him had Hiroto wheeling around in fright and clutching the improvised weapon to his chest…but the forest was silent again other than the low droning of insects. Shaking his head in annoyance, Hiroto resumed his slow pace through the forest.

"Jumping at shadows," he murmured, chuckling throatily.

Until one of the shadows moved.

In a flurry of fur and legs Pakkun pounced, clamping his teeth down hard around Hiroto's meaty thigh. The man let out an anguished scream; bringing the bone-saw down in a clumsy arch towards the snarling little dog. A larger mouth instantly seized his wrist, and the hundred-kilo weight of Bull slammed Hiroto to the ground. And suddenly there were teeth everywhere, slobbering mouths of different sizes securing Hiroto's thrashing mammoth-frame to the soft, wet earth. The man was screaming in terror, his cries escalating in pitch until even the dogs were whining around their mouthfuls.

"So who won?" Kakashi's shouted above the din and instantly Hiroto's cries died in his throat as ice cold dread flooded his system.

Oh gods, not him…

Pakkun, releasing his mouthful of thigh, trotted happily up the curved incline of Hiroto's stomach to sit proudly on his victim's chest.

"Group effort, Boss. You're always preaching the benefits of teamwork, yeah?"

Kakashi smiled grimly underneath his mask, fixing Hiroto with his coldest stare.

"I suppose that's a months worth of dog biscuits for all of you. I guess I'll be stuck in the kitchen for a week after this is over…"

"That I'll pay to see," Genma snorted from beside him.

"So…Hiroto. Tell us everything we want to know…and just so we're clear, we _will_ kill you anyway."

* * *

Sakura smiled in relief as she watched Kakashi step through the trees, flanked by his eight nin-hounds, and onto the grassy hill overlooking the Nakamizu estate. Dropping her hands from Sai's outstretched leg and patting his shoulder reassuringly she stood and smoothed down her skirt, a fine pink eyebrow raised at the man slouching his way toward her.

"What took you so long?" she asked, trying to hide the smirk pulling at her cheeks.

"Maa, I got drawn into a lengthy and philosophical discussion about the various flavours and ingredients needed to make the perfect dog biscuit."

The giant black Mastiff, Bull, if Sakura remembered correctly, chuffed something that sounded a suspiciously like 'cat.'

"Where's Genma?"

"Arranging the fireworks. Where's…" Kakashi looked around and scratched his head in a puzzled manner, "…everyone."

"Well, Yamato-sensei, six Narutos, and the ANBU Owl are cleaning up, and Sai is…err…" Sakura gestured vaguely at their dark-haired teammate who was lying prostrate on the ground with an enormous goofy smile spread across his pale features. "Let's just say he's floating around on a pink fluffy cloud at the moment. That Kuma guy really did a number on him."

"Kuma…" Kakashi muttered darkly, walking to meet her.

"Sai won, clearly, but not without a broken leg, three ribs, a punctured lung and some quite impressive blood loss. I've reset the leg as best I can and repaired his ribs and lung, but it'll be a little while before he's lucid again. I had to give him something for the pain. He was delirious, actually crying if you can believe that, poor thing. How are you feeling?"

"A little stiff and sore but fine."

"That's good," Sakura said stretching on tip toes to pull her fingers through Kakashi's dirty mop of hair. "Ha, looks like you've got half the forest stuck in here," she giggled, trying to dislodge a particularly stubborn twig. Kakashi's eyes slid closed in appreciation as her slender fingers worked against his scalp. His quiet hum of contentment didn't go unnoticed. He felt her small hands pause briefly before they retreated completely.

"See?" she asked, quickly holding up the offending foliage as evidence and biting down on the corner of her lower lip. His eye was drawn to that little action, his gaze fixed with intensity on that small glint of straight white teeth against full cherry lips, perfect lips, lips that would taste like the cinnamon lip gloss she kept squirreled away in her weapons pouch. Would they feel as soft as they looked? Slowly moving against his own, parting enough for his tongue to sweep…

Her self-conscious cough bought his attention back to her face, which was burning an interesting shade of beetroot. His eye curved up into a happy crescent and Sakura stared resolutely at the ground, her eyes almost bulging out the sockets.

Awkward…

_He was staring at my mouth. Staring. At. My. Mouth. _

Kakashi, busy suffering through his own traumatised yet much more self-derogatory inner monologue, had never been happier to hear…

"Hey! Baka-sensei!" Naruto shouted, throwing both arms up into the air as if his bright orange visage might not actually be visible from space. Behind him the rest of their group followed at a more sedate pace, looking battle worn and exhausted.

Sakura waved them over a little too enthusiastically.

"Everything's taken care of senpai," Tenzou said, leaning heavily on Genma for support. His deep-set almond shaped eyes looking positively ghoulish from exhaustion.

"Good. Is everything in place Genma?"

"Yep," Genma answered, pulling a half salute.

They looked down at the estate, marvelling at how grand and untainted it looked in the warm morning light. At the main gates they could see a group of men walking, each carrying a small, emaciated figure bridal style. Kenta looked up at them with a thankful smile, hitching his fragile load into a more secure position. His daughter's breath was shallow and weak, fanning gently against his collarbone. She was alive at least. The other men in his group looked on wearily before disappearing into the forest. With a last nod Kenta followed after them.

"Well Genma," Kakashi announced, "do the honours."

"With pleasure." Genma grinned crookedly, bringing his hands up in a single seal, "_Release_."

One moment the manor was there, magnificent and imposing, and the next it simply wasn't. The explosion split the air around them like a lighting strike, shaking the ground and sucking the moisture from the atmosphere. The enormous fireball rose high into the sky, curling and tumbling until only thick choking smoke remained, an expanding plume of black spreading upward.

"No evidence, no bodies, just the burnt shell of a former luxury mansion," Genma declared proudly.

"That noise will have travelled over twenty miles. We should get out of here before every ninja in the country descends on us," Tenzou warned.

"Yeah, you're right. Lets get out of here, the sooner we get back to Konoha the better. I just hope we aren't too late," Kakashi said, turning to lead the way home and casting a last thoughtful gaze over his shoulder. "Naruto, you can carry Sai."

"WHAT!"

* * *

_AN: _

_* Tabula Rasa - anything existing undisturbed in its original pure state_

___Sumiiro - incase you are interested, is a type of japanese black calligraphy ink.. or at least it __should be if my dictionary works..._  



	19. Chapter 18: Painting by Numbers

_AN: Hey pretty readers, sorry about the terribly long wait, I had a holiday and then things were crazy and then things were changed…but finally here is the next chapter and it's a little longer than usual to make up for it. A humongous 'thank you' to _**moderndayportia**_ for Betaing, putting up with me (I am The Queen of Mixed-Metaphor!) and generally investing so much time into making this all glorious and awesome. _

_

* * *

  
_

**Chapter 18: Painting by Numbers**

A forest surrounding a wide expanse of meadow just north of Konoha was alive with the waking calls of birds and the sporadic cracking of twigs under hoof as its larger inhabitants emerged from dense woodland into pasture. The deer, leggy and skittish, wandered into the open with tails fanning and ears erect, alert and ready to bolt at the slightest break in the morning calm. The adolescent stags, inexperienced and impatient, bounded eagerly through the clearing, parading proudly through the herd of females and rubbing their velvet-covered antlers against the soil to dig for white-root.

The Nara lands surrounding Konoha were a patchwork of rocky fells, lush forest and small clear tarns, although in the baking summer heat before the coming rainy season, the later were more like muddy puddles, low and murky. Above the valley which cradled Konoha the air seemed cleaner, the moss-covered trees sprawled unhindered by agriculture or landscaping, and the natural paths were much less travelled. Only the Nara clan frequented this part of the forest to harvest antlers and monitor the herd.

So when a girl stepped into the clearing, only the deer noticed.

* * *

A red clipboard was thrust under Iruka's nose followed by a low unintelligible rumble.

"Thank you Konohamaru," he chirped brightly, giving the bleary eyed teen a wide appreciative smile.

He was answered with another groan as the boy slid down the rough stone and rested his forehead on his knees.

"So is that everyone?"

"Yes Iruka-sensei. The southwest district is clear," Konohamaru struggled out, gesturing limply at the long, snaking line of civilians that coiled down the full length of the Hokage Mountain and disappeared behind rocky outcrops. They all looked fearful and were clutching bundles of personal belonging's tightly to their chests.

"Brilliant! You can go and join Moegi in the market district; she's having trouble with some of the stallholders."

"Can't I have five minutes? Those elderly civvies pack a punch!" Konohamaru whined, rubbing his hand over a darkening bruise on his jaw.

"They hit you?"

"No one likes being woken up at this time sensei," he justified flatly.

Iruka bit his lip to stifle the chuckle threatening to escape. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can treat you to ramen. Besides, you don't want to be doing this when the suns gets high. It's going to be a scorcher."

"How are you going to treat me to ramen when we're evacuating all the restaurant owners?"

"Oh…err…"

"Shinobi rule number six: A shinobi does not question orders," interjected a prim voice from behind them.

"Ah, Hanabi, all done?" Iruka asked, turning to the pearly-eyed chuunin.

"Of course. All evacuees present and accounted for." She handed over her clipboard with an elegant bow.

"Great, Maybe you could take Konohamaru down to the markets and make sure he does some work?"

The boy-in-question's head shot up and panic filled eyes fixed on Iruka's. "Oh please gods no…not with…_her_."

"What's wrong with Hanabi?"

"She's a witch, a scary-eyed, militant witch."

"I'm standing right here you know," Hanabi retorted indignantly.

"Further evidence that this is all a nightmare and that, in reality, I am still tucked in bed where I should be, away from violent civilians and superior posers."

"Are you _still_ holding a grudge against me for beating you in the chuunin exam?" she snipped, placing her hands firmly on her hips.

"You won on a technicality!"

"Knocking yourself out with your own clone is not a technicality. It's simple stupidity."

"_See_, you didn't beat me, I beat myself!"

"Shinobi rule number three: Always be aware of your surroundings…"

"Argh! You are such a…"

"STOP BICKERING!" Iruka's bellowing voice tumbled like an avalanche down the mountainside, causing many of the waiting villagers to drop their bundles of belongings in surprise. Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration as the worried sea of eyes staring up at him swelled with distrust and suspicion. A low murmur of disapproval ran through their ranks. The words "crazy ninja" drifted up to him on a warm breeze. A baby started crying.

"Will you two please just get to work?" he asked despairingly, grinding palms into eye sockets

"Yes sensei," Konohamaru and Hanabi muttered in unison.

"Thank you." And then redirecting his attention to the waiting villagers, Iruka cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "If you would all like to make your way up here in a calm, orderly fashion, we can get you settled into the barracks and someone will be along shortly to answer your questions. Come on. No need to be scared!"

* * *

Kakashi kept the group moving until they had crossed into home territory. With the threat of Kuma's brainwashed army looming over them, it was imperative that they return to Konoha as soon as possible. But as the sun climbed towards its zenith, so did the temperature and, subsequently, the exhaustion of the group.

Kakashi had kept his dogs with them as escorts for the journey, certain that their keen hearing and sense of smell would alert him to danger long before any of his team could in their current state. The dogs moved silently through the woodland in a practiced 'V' formation. Pakkun stuck close to his master's ankles and shot worried glances back at those lagging behind.

"They're getting tired."

"I know."

"You're tired."

"I know."

Travelling under the dense canopy of trees provided little respite from the increasing humidity, and swarms of tiny, biting insects were a constant irritation. It would only get worse as they neared Konoha because Fire Country had a naturally warmer climate than the Land of Waterfall.

Naruto and Genma seemed to be the only ones coping well with the gruelling pace. Even with Sai slung high over his shoulder, the Kyuubi container marched on as if he were merely carrying an oversized feather pillow.

Tenzou was struggling the most, helped along by Yugao, his face wet and pale as he tried to push through the burdens of chakra depletion and fatigue. His stifling ANBU mask had been relinquished and now hung forgotten from a loop on his belt. Sakura wasn't doing much better, having drained most of her reserves to enable her injured and tired teammates to at least _move_. Kakashi could feel his own pace slowing, a lack of nourishment followed by hours of torture had left his reactions sluggish and his head heavy. When his foot caught on an exposed tree root for the seventh time, he finally signalled a stop. The ninken fanned out into guard positions without being asked.

"We all need to rest," he addressed the swaying group. "Naruto, put Sai down and see about finding something to eat. We passed a river a few hundred yards back. If we're lucky there might be some fish. And fill up the canteens, too. Sakura, Owl, Yamato; rest up. Genma and I will take first watch."

"But what if by the time we get back…" Naruto started, brushing his sweat soaked hair away from his face. It was what they were all thinking.

"We can't travel in this condition or this heat. We'll rest for three hours, by which time the sun will have lost some of its intensity," Kakashi replied sharply.

Naruto nodded firmly before placing Sai on the moss cushioned ground and disappearing into the trees. The ink user stirred, blinking owlishly up at the dappled canopy.

"How is he?" Kakashi asked as Sakura knelt down next to him and ran her hands over his torso to assess his condition.

"The medication has almost worn off. He'll be lucid again soon," she answered tiredly, slumping down against a tree stump.

"You should rest too."

He reached forward to push the sweaty hair off of her forehead and noted her ashen complexion and the bruise-like marks forming around her eye sockets. She dazedly leaned into his palm and hummed against the touch.

"How come your fingers are cold? You should be a doctor…" She weakly made to stand up again, but his gloved hand slid up to the crown of her head and pushed down.

"Sakura."

"Hmm?"

"Get some rest."

"I will, I just need to check... everyone is okay..."

Before he could even reply, her chin hit her chest and she was fast asleep.

* * *

Twelve girls stood in a grassy glade.

As the sun crawled upward they were joined by a thirteenth, a fourteenth, a fifteenth.

Fifteen girls stood in a wide circle, which spanned the length and breadth of the clearing, unaffected by the blazing heat and buzzing insects. Moving their hands in perfect unity they flashed through a long and complicated series of seals.

_Hare, Ram, Ox, Ram_

At the centre of the circle a bright, spinning ball of chakra began to form, its surface shifting and writhing like mercury with each slow rotation.

_Tiger, Hare, Boar, Serpent_

The orb began to gain mass and spin faster, a shrill whine ringing from its core.

_Rat, Dragon, Dragon_

Fifteen pairs of eyes closed tightly in concentration as the chakra charged and the air twisted and whipped, the sound morphing into a deafening screech.

_Dog, Horse, Monkey_

Blades of grass bent flat against the pressure, tinted blue by the eerie glow building above them.

_Bird_

The final seal clapped into position and chakra burst outward, flooding the clearing with dazzling, silver light before disappearing.

The ear-splitting wail slowly tapered off and was replaced by the empty drone of the singing cicadas.

Fifteen girls stood in a grassy glade.

They made no conversation.

They just stood.

And waited.

* * *

"Hello? Anybody there?" Konohamaru called, rapping thunderously on the wooden door of a pastry shop. Only one more row of shops to go and then hopefully Iruka-sensei would let him go for lunch. He could see Hanabi on the other side of the street, guiding an elderly lady over to where Moegi was organizing another large group of citizens for the trek up the Hokage Mountain.

"Hello?" He pounded even harder.

Upon receiving no answer, he tried the handle. It turned and the door opened outward with a creaking sigh. Blinking into the relative darkness, he gingerly put a sandaled foot over the threshold.

"Anyone?"

Silence.

It seemed rather stupid to leave the door of any establishment unlocked when the owners were clearly not there, but then again Konoha was a ninja village, which made locks a little redundant.

The pastry shop was a modest affair, with only seven plastic-top-tables and a handful of rickety, wicker chairs crammed into its small interior, it was cosy though, and he knew Moegi often bought a selection of delicious cakes from here for their team picnics with Ebisu-sensei.

His gaze slid across the room and stalled on a counter where a pile of cinnamon buns looked back at him invitingly.

His stomach growled pathetically.

In his haste to stop Iruka-sensei's infuriatingly loud, Morse-coded knocking at five-thirty that morning, he had completely forgotten to eat breakfast…and now it was almost lunchtime. And someone had very kindly thought to leave a nice tray of honey coated cinnamon goodness for him…

Before he had even realised what he was doing, Konohamaru was across the room and wrapping his fingers around the topmost bun.

Gods did it smell amazing!

The sweet aroma wafted up to him as he gave the sticky ball of dough an experimental squeeze; the nutty, spicy scent had his toes curling down around the rubber soles of his sandals.

"Mmm…" he rumbled has he bought the delectable morsel up to his mouth.

A sharp, hard smack to the head had him screeching in shock, his fingers loosened their hold on the bun, which dropped to the wooden floor and rolled off under a plastic topped table.

"We're supposed to be evacuating the citizens, not robbing them blind." Hanabi's tight, precise voice dripped with disgust.

"What's wrong with you, sneaking up on people like that! And I wasn't stealing. I was _sampling_!"

"You were stealing and…hey!" she said snatching another bun out of his hand.

"Gods woman! You're so troublesome!"

"And you've been spending too much time with Shikamaru-san." The reproach in her voice was evident.

"What's wrong with Shikamaru, the guy's a genius!"

"He's lazy. Daddy said he has the potential to make Hokage but no ambition."

"Daddy?" scoffed Konohamaru, "You're too uptight, princess."

"Princess?" she said in confusion, whipping her long ebony hair over her shoulder haughtily.

"Yes, Miss I'm-from-an-elite-family-and-therefore-have-to-walk-'round-with-a-massive-stick-up-my-arse-Hyuuga."

Hanabi's face instantly darkened as she glared venomously at the boy in front of her.

"Well maybe you should try acting more like you _are_ from an elite family. You're grandfather was one of our most respected and longest serving leaders, yet here you are, stealing cinnamon buns from little old ladies."

"_Sampling_. And acting like you're god's gift does not make you a better ninja than me."

"Yes, but being a chuunin while you're still a genin _does_ make me a better ninja than you."

"Argh!" Konohamaru growled tugging his hair in frustration. "Will you just chill out?"

"Chill out," she repeated looking down intently at the cake in her hand.

"YES! Relax, have some fun, live a…"

The bun smacked him straight on the nose before sliding down his cheek and joining its companion on the floor. His hand reached up to wipe at the tacky trail it had left on his face.

"Did you just throw a bun at me?" he asked in bewilderment.

"Yes." Hanabi replied seriously, but with the shadow of a smirk tugging at her refined features.

Konohamaru recovered from the shock quickly, a lip-curling grin splitting his face. One arm wrapped around the tray of buns while the other started launching the sticky projectiles at the Hyuuga heiress. Immediately the Byakugan activated, Hanabi's temples rippling with the appearance of tiny veins, and the buns fell in halves to the floor.

"Hey, using your freaky eyes is cheating!" he cried, scooping up another handful.

"It's not cheating, it's utilising–"

Hanabi's sentence hung in the air unfinished and her eyes widened further. She spun on the spot, staring fixedly at the painting on the wall behind her. The buns hit the back of her head, splattering crumbs and honey into her hair.

"Shit, sorry Hanabi," Konohamaru said, wincing as three of the round balls hung from her long glossy locks like pendulous, orange hair-ornaments. "I know you're good but you don't have to try and show off…"

Her body was rigid, her shoulders quivering ever so slightly. Konohamaru swallowed down a lump of anxiety–because for all his teasing and posturing he really _didn't _want to be on the bad side of a Hyuuga–as he walked forward and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. It stuck a little as it came in contact with the black fabric of her shirt.

"Look, I'm really sorry, I'll stand still so you can pummel me back." He waved the half decimated tray of sweets in front of her nose.

A small frown pulled her eyebrows together.

"Earth calling Hanabi-chan…what are you looking at?"

Her hand raised to gesture shakily at the wall.

"It's just a painting of a cat in a vase of flowers" he said in confusion, looking at the hideously vibrant canvas that still had the 'paint by numbers' guidelines visible. He couldn't blame her for being horrified. The 'artist' had rendered the cat a putrid shade of pink and the flowers had merged into the vase in a muddy brown swirl. Was that chewing gum sticking to the corner?

"There's someone next door," she whispered quietly, finely pulling her eyes away from the wall.

"Ohhhh, okay, you're doing your eye thing. I'll go get them!"

He saluted eagerly, then pressed the tray into her hands, wiping his own on his trousers.

"Konohamaru wait!" she hissed.

But he'd already shot out the door. Placing the tray down on the counter and muttering angrily to herself, Hanabi hurried after him.

The unit next door was a dilapidated shoe-shop which had obviously been out of business for some time. The windows were smeared with white paint and a heavy padlock hung on the chain grate over the door. Digging into his thigh holster, Konohamaru pulled out his trusty Academy-issued lock-pick set and quickly inserted the torsion-wrench into the keyhole, carefully selecting the half diamond shaped pick. He placed his ear close to the lock to listen to the sliding pins of the mechanism.

"Konohamaru, stop, something isn't right."

"Shh…I've almost got it," he whispered, running his tongue along his teeth.

"The chakra in there is erratic; it isn't civilian."

"We still need to evacuate _everyone_…Aha! Got it."

The padlock sprung open with a satisfying snap. Wrenching the grating apart, Konohamaru kicked open the door and stepped inside.

The scent of sweating leather and rubber mingled with stale air, making the store smell musky and sour. The sunlight poured through the doorway, highlighting the swirling motes of dust kicked up by their arrival.

"Are you sure someone's in here? It looks like this place hasn't been touched in a year," he wondered, dragging a finger across the surface of a display cabinet and revealing rich ochre timber under layers of grey dust.

Hanabi nodded stiffly, her puffy eyes darting to the stock cupboard door. Striding forward, Konohamaru put his hand on the brass knob.

"Be careful."

The store cupboard was long and thin, with cubbyholes still full of footwear running floor-to-ceiling up the walls. The farthest wall had a letterbox window inserted into it, letting a fair amount of light into the small room. The first thing they noticed was that the smell of leather was stronger in the small space, but there was another smell that had both Konohamaru and Hanabi covering their noses with their sleeves.

The stench of urine and faecal matter.

The second thing they noticed was fast staccato breathing trembling through the naked body hunkered under the window.

Hanabi's surprised gasp caused the shaking figure to jolt into a seated position, dim slate-grey eyes narrowing at the two shinobi. Waves of strong, muddy chakra rolled off of her. A warning.

She was so tiny and frail, her thin, willowy limbs tangled protectively around her torso. Her skin was pallid, tinged yellow through illness and the filth covering her lower body. A fine sheen of perspiration covered her whole body, and her long dark hair hung in tangled tails over her shoulders.

Konohamaru edged forward slowly, unzipping his jacket and holding it out in front of him. He coughed awkwardly to clear his throat.

"Here. You know, for the nakedness."

"I'm h-hot," the girl croaked out simply, her gaze hostile and wary, like a cornered animal.

"What's your name?"

"Konohamaru…" Hanabi warned close to his ear.

"Hey that's a nice tattoo. What's it mean?" he said, ignoring her and gesturing to the brown orchid sitting high on the girl's hip.

She frowned, shaking her head back and forth in agitation, another pulse of chakra jumped from her body, filling the room. The two ninja stepped back slowly.

"She's one of them. One of the girls we've been warned about. She's dangerous."

"I wonder how long she's been hiding here," he replied, nodding up at the letterbox window where the glass was smeared with fingerprints. "She can't be much older than us."

"She's dangerous."

The girl twitched in response.

"She's ill," he reasoned.

"She's the enemy."

"Hanabi, just go get Tsunade-sama."

* * *

The air seemed to shimmer and bow as another girl walked out of the forest to join the throng of young women in the meadow. She looked around at their upturned faces.

Some stood out as familiar, but most of them were strangers to her.

No pleasantries were exchanged when she took her position.

* * *

Genma stood and stretched, popping the joints along his shoulders that had grown stiff and sore from keeping watch in the awkward position crammed between the boughs of an ancient oak. Jumping down and using chakra to cushion his fall, he landed silently in the centre of the camp and ran his eyes over the group. Tenzou, Yugao, and Sakura were still sleeping, Sai had regained consciousness and was doodling quietly several metres away. He could see Naruto crouched in the bracken on the edge of their camp, his back leaning against the giant chocolate Bull-Mastiff as he kept watch.

"So…" Genma began, slinking over to park himself beside Kakashi on the log where the copy-nin sat cross-legged with his book open on his lap.

Kakashi turned over a well-thumbed page and continued to read.

"We're friends right?"

Another page turn.

"And friends confide in each other, yeah?"

"Mm."

"…So if you needed to discuss something…personal, you know you can come to me. I _am_ your man…"

The copy-nin let out a light nasal sigh.

"I know you're not big on the caring, sharing stuff…but if you need to talk about anything, _anything_ at all, you know you can…"

"What are you getting at Genma?" Kakashi asked with disinterest, keeping his gaze fixed on the small type of his favourite book.

Smirking lopsidedly, Genma pulled the bobbing senbon out of his mouth and flicked it up and down rhythmically between his thumb and index finger.

"What's going on with you and Nurse Pinkie?" he nodded his head over at the sleeping medic.

Kakashi snapped his book shut. His eye flickered over to Sakura briefly.

Well, that wasn't what he had been expecting…

"What makes you think there is anything going on?" the copy-nin answered calmly. The best way to respond to a question you didn't want to answer was with another question.

Genma scratched his chin in faux-contemplation. "Hmm, let's see: the way you greeted her at the compound, how reluctant you've been to let her out of your sight since, the way you're gravitating towards her–"

"I do not gravitate…and will you stop waving that thing around? I'd like to keep my good eye if I can help it."

Not to be deterred so easily Genma pressed on. "Then why are you sitting over here, with a perfectly good view of her backside, pretending to read?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Genma snorted derisively.

After a long pause in which Kakashi stared resolutely at the front cover of his book, he finally spoke up. "She's my team-mate, my responsibility. I thought she had been killed, or brainwashed or worse. I'm concerned."

"She seems fine to me, just tired."

"Exactly."

"You thought Sai and Naruto had been killed. I don't see you paying any extra attention to them."

If the deepening crease between Kakashi's eyes was any indication, then Genma had definitely hit a nerve.

"Of course I was worried about them," he said quietly, squeezing the orange-jacketed book between his fingers.

Pakkun's broad, wrinkled head popped up between them. "You gave her your bag as a makeshift pillow," his gravelly voice intoned knowingly.

"I don't need it," Kakashi shrugged

"You _were _looking at her rump."

"Definitely," Genma agreed.

"And before she rolled over you were looking at her mouth, _again_," Pakkun added thoughtfully.

"Mouth, eh?"

"What's with the tag team interrogation?" Kakashi hissed, his composure slipping briefly. It _had_ been a really long mission and he just wanted to lock himself away in his apartment for a good few days and forget all about torture sessions, female assassins and seventeen year-old medics whose noses twitched when they slept.

Looking back and forth between his so-called-friend and annoyingly observant dog, he could only despair inwardly at the expressions of smug satisfaction stretched across their faces. "You…" he said jabbing Genma in the chest with Icha Icha "…watch too many soap drama's, and you…" he continued frowning down at his panting summons, "…better remember who feeds you."

Genma and Pakkun exchanged their own personal versions of a cunning smiles, one so lopsided it was almost a toothy dimple and the other looking like a screwed up ball of tissue paper.

"You're secret is safe with us," Pakkun wheezed out in amusement.

"Yeah. We want to help."

"Help?" Kakashi did not like the sound of that…

"Pakkun tells me she tried to kiss you a few days ago."

"Telltale," Pakkun accused, flattening his ears against his head.

Kakashi's eyebrows shot up impossibly high before narrowing dangerously at the tubby dog. "You two are acting like pre-genin matchmakers. We are still on a mission and have information which could be crucial to the survival or our village, so cut it out and focus. I mean it."

Genma barrelled on regardless, "If you're worried about the age gap, you shouldn't be. Fourteen years isn't _that_ bad and every girl secretly wants a sugar-daddy, and we all know that you are filthy rich even if you never pay for anything. That wasn't a crack about your age by the way…it's not like you're old enough to be her actual father."

"Well actually…" Pakkun interjected, raising a paw and preparing to launch into a lecture about reproduction.

"For the last time, there is nothing going on between me and Sakura, like I said, I am concerned. That's all." Kakashi snarled through clenched teeth.

"Sakura smells nice. I like her," Pakkun hummed happily.

"Yeah, Sakura _definitely_ smells nice…" Genma said, grinning lecherously.

Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose to fend off the growing tension headache spreading across his forehead. "Both of you just…leave me alone so I can pretend to read my book."

* * *

Sakura woke gradually from a dreamless sleep to find herself enveloped by a scent she associated with safety: the scent of evergreen mixed with nuts and spice with a subtle undertone of dog. Her eyelids fluttered drowsily open, a swath of blurry charcoal grey filled her vision. Rubbing her eyes to clear them of sleep Sakura slowly sat up to look down at the bag that had somehow found its way underneath her head.

Kakashi's bag.

Looking around the camp for her team leader she spotted him dozing against a log, his head supported by a hand propped up on its lichen-encrusted surface. She couldn't help grinning a little at the awkward position; he'd have a neck-ache when he woke up.

Then she realised, belatedly that if Kakashi was sleeping then she had slept through most of her shift.

"Crap," she groaned while slapping her forehead with her hand.

"It's fine, Kakashi-senpai said that as team medic, you needed the most rest. He let Yamato keep sleeping too."

Sakura looked up into the tree above her where Sai sat straddling a bough with his sketchbook in hand.

"Sai! You shouldn't be climbing up trees with a broken leg!" she chastised before leaping up to join him.

"You healed most of it," he defended with a blank smile.

"You still shouldn't aggravate it until I can heal you properly. How's the pain?" She sat opposite him and placed a hand on his shin, sending small bursts of healing chakra into the bone.

"Sore but bearable. I can walk on it without too much discomfort."

"Do you want a pain killer or an anti-inflammatory?"

Sai thought for a moment, his gaze settling on the open sketchbook pages. A look of slight confusion crossed his ghost-like features. "No, I think the strong medication you gave me before is still in effect," he replied while spinning the page around to show her.

"What the hell is that?" Sakura peered down at the abomination sketched out in pencil with horror.

"It appears to be a twenty headed dog with toasters for feet wearing a festival kimono."

"That's just disturbing."

"It seemed quite calming when I started it." He turned the page back around and began shading a bony projection coming from the dog-toaster's chest.

"Sai?"

"Hmm?"

"About Kuma…I, erm…I wanted to know if you were okay…you know…"

"I don't want to talk about it." His response wasn't aggressive or even defensive. In fact, Sai spoke so softly that Sakura almost couldn't hear him. He didn't even pause in his work, the gentle scraping of the lead whispered against the paper long after he'd finished his sentence.

"Okay."

Sakura could understand the need for privacy; she didn't know what had happened between Kuma and Sai, only that Sai and come out victorious. But what were they to each other?

"But," Sai continued, taking Sakura by surprise, "you will need my help with this right?"

He reached into his satchel to pack away his sketchbook, and, after groping blindly through the bowels of the bag, he withdrew a small leather-bound notebook and began leafing through its pages.

The old doctor's medical journal.

She snatched it from his hands and opened to the first page.

_…Dysfunctions related to disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain. It's spongy and riddled with holes, just like cheese. Hypertension damages the blood vessel lining; degradation of endothelium, big balloons and anchors. Drip. Drip. Complete and perfect…_

"Most of it looks like the nonsensical ramblings of a mad man, but Kuma would have chosen to work with the Doctor only if he was extremely talented. Also, I believe Kuma would have linked the reprogramming of the girls to the seal. I don't think the seal and the brainwashing are separate issues," Sai explained.

"What are you saying?"

"I will assist by telling you all that I am able to of Kuma's techniques: how he would have approached his objectives, holes he might have left in the programming. I might not want to talk about it…but if you can reverse this process…" Sai trailed off.

"Reverse it? How did you know that's what I was thinking?" Sakura asked with a grin, a sudden excitement swimming in her bottle-green eyes.

"The girls are innocent. They've been violated. It seems…_wrong_…to kill them without trying to help them. I don't know if anyone else will see it that way though. As soon as first blood is spilt they'll be seen as an enemy."

Sakura felt a sudden warmth expand in her chest. Sai really _did_ understand her, and she understood him; to Sai this was deeply personal.

"We'll definitely help them."

"We'll try," he agreed.

Kakashi's commanding voice rose up to greet them.

"Sakura, before we get moving, can I have a word?"

Sakura looked over the edge of the bough to see him slipping his bag onto his shoulder, looking more dishevelled than usual and kneading his neck with one hand.

They both slipped out of the tree to land beside him.

"Thanks for the pillow Kakashi-sensei, I can give you a massage to iron out those kinks in return, if you'd like?"

It must have been a trick of the light, but she swore she saw Kakashi's ears turn pink.

He didn't answer her and instead grabbed onto her upper arm, none to gently, and pulled her through the undergrowth and away from the camp. He set a brutal pace, the ferns whipped against her legs as she stumbled to keep up, reluctant to use her newly recovered chakra reserves to match his long-legged stride.

"Where are we going sensei?" she asked, throwing a bemused look back over her shoulder in the direction of their group, which had long since become obscured by the greenery.

Kakashi kept marching, batting large papaya leaves away from his face with his free gloved hand. The grip on her arm tightened to the point of near painfulness as he tugged her onward.

"Kakashi, you're hurting me." Sakura said with a nervous, humourless giggle.

He ignored her completely. Suddenly feeling uneasy and awkward, Sakura found herself trying to subtly extricate herself from his vice-like hold. When a branch snapped back to slap her across the cheek, she finally lost her temper. Digging her heels into soft, dark topsoil, she placed her free hand on his offending limb and sent a short burst of chakra up his arm. Kakashi swore in surprise, relinquishing his grip on her and shaking out his hand as if burnt.

Liberally messaging her reddening arm, Sakura didn't even try to keep the annoyance out of her voice, "Where the hell are you taking me?"

Kakashi hitched his forehead protector up to expose the Sharingan eye, and his heavy-lidded, mismatched gaze scanned the forest around them briefly before settling back on her. The slow rotation of crimson iris always had the strangest effect on her; it was like standing in a tunnel, looking towards a pinprick of light and being unable to judge the distance between. It was unnerving. Sakura shivered involuntarily.

"This should be far enough."

"Far enough? You've been acting really bizarre since the compound, like, more so than normal…are you feeling…"

His thumb gently brushed along the thin pink welt dissecting her cheek.

"Are _you_ feeling alright, Sakura?"

Her mind had suddenly become very foggy. When had he gotten so close?

"I-I'm fine…"

His nimble fingers ghosted across her parted lips before dipping down her chin to trace the sharp line of her jaw.

"Are you sure?" he coaxed, running his hand down her neck to rest on her shoulder. "We've been through a lot over the last few days, but you seem to be coping too well. I'm concerned."

"Really I'm fine, tired, but fine. I'm just anxious to get home and…" her voice died in her throat when his hands moved to hold her around the waist, his thumbs rubbing slow circular patterns against her hip bones.

A sudden prickling heat sparked to life low in her gut. She tried to swallow but her mouth seemed to have dried up completely. She _tried_ to ignore the tingling sensation spreading outwards from where his fingers had dipped under the waistband of her medic apron to meet bare flesh, but it was almost impossible to focus. All she could see was the revolving tomoe of the Sharingan. It dominated her senses.

Was that her breath panting rhythmically in the background? She couldn't tell.

He leant forward, his masked mouth resting against the shell of her ear. His voice came out like a purr, its deep bass seeming to reverberate right through her body, his lips moving like a kiss against her skin.

"Are you sure you're feeling yourself?"

"What?" she shook her head in an attempt to clear it as a fresh wave of gooseflesh erupted across her arms. His fingers were working against the buckles on her medic-apron and somewhere in the back of her head alarm bells started ringing.

She wanted this, or she wanted him, or at least she thought she did.

When she thought about Kakashi she thought about feeling safe. When she thought about kissing him…which she seemed to think about a lot about these days, she would find herself fixated on the details. Would his mask feel smooth and silky against her lips or would the fabric be coarse and rough like his gloves? Would she have to stand on her tiptoes or would be bend down for her?

He had been watching her since the compound. She knew it. She could _feel_ it. A quiet whispering prickle against the back of her neck letting her know he was there.

But now? Well this felt fantastic…his hands on her hips, squeezing and grabbing, the fabric of his mask, which as it turned out was actually quite soft, moving against her neck…but wasn't this all a little…random? Did he have four hands? They seemed to be everywhere…

When she felt the heavy cotton slide down her legs and his thumbs hook around her black shorts she reached out dazedly to grasp one of his wrists.

"What are you doing?" the slight panic in her breathless voice was clear as she drew back from him.

For a second, doubt flitted across Kakashi's eyes, but then his jaw seemed to set in determination.

"Are you yourself?" he questioned again without the caressing softness lining his voice.

Sakura balked a little at the question, shifting under his scrutiny.

"I've told you, I'm fine…"

Then it hit her.

Her eyes narrowed, her hands forming a single sign. "Kai!" The man standing directly in front of her shimmered briefly like a desert mirage before vanishing completely. Her eyes slid down to appraise the real Kakashi.

Kakashi groaned long and low as the words left her mouth and her focus readjusted to where he was kneeling with his fingers poised over the waistband of her shorts. A bright hot blush was quickly spreading across her cheeks. Lunging at her, he made a grab for the shorts intending to whip them down in one deft movement, but Sakura had recovered quicker than he had anticipated. Hissing like a feral cat backed into a corner, she threw her arm forward, her knuckles, covered with a gossamer veil of chakra, connected with his jaw with an ear-splitting crack. Kakashi spiralled backward, hitting a tree behind him and slumping brokenly to the ground.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she shrieked.

Groaning and clutching his jaw with a shaky hand, Kakashi looked up balefully from his slumped position on the ground.

"I need to make sure that you're still yourself."

Sakura's brow knitted in confusion, and then slowly her eyes grew larger, and larger and larger as the understanding dawned on her.

"You think I've been brainwashed," her voice was so devoid of emotion it was chilling. "You don't trust me. You think I'm one of them. You think I would hurt my friends."

Kakashi winced at the accusation and nodded once, feeling suddenly very exposed.

"You used your eye on me?"

He gulped before answering. "Only a minor genjutsu to lower your inhibitions, I needed to check your other hip, to make sure you haven't been marked."

"YOU USED YOUR EYE ON ME!" her fist went though the trunk of the tree only millimetres from his head. Splinters rained down over his torso.

But Sakura wasn't finished, oh no. Kakashi had witnessed her wrath on many occasions, although normally it was more amusing because it was aimed at Naruto. Being the recipient wasn't quite so funny.

"I'm a genjutsu type you moron! What made you think I wouldn't see through a party trick like that!" she spat.

"Well…it did take you a while to realise…" Sakura's eyes burned brighter "…and, as your team leader you are my responsibility, I can't let you complete the mission until I know you won't try to assassinate the Hokage. You were out of my sight for at least an hour, anything could've happened in that time. You've remained completely calm and unphased by this whole experience and–" he tried to reason, but she cut him short.

"So you conjure up some perverted molestation jutsu to assess my condition?"

Kakashi honestly looked as though he had been slapped. "Erm…the genjutsu was supposed to provide you with a distraction of your choosing…"

Mortification. Complete and utter mortification. Sakura scrunched her eyes up in embarrassment, wishing she could melt into the forest floor.

"Great. Just great. That's amazing," her top hit the ground exposing a creamy expanse of toned stomach.

"…Sakura…what are you doing…" Kakashi coughed awkwardly.

"What? Just because I'm not having a complete nervous breakdown over this mission you think I'm a traitor," she said, her voice rising in pitch and volume. "I thought my two best friends were dead, I had to watch you get taken away from me to endure horrific torture while I was completely unable to help you…" she shimmied her black shorts down to her ankles then hopped about madly, trying to shake her boots off. "…I was so relived to find out they were alive, I've never been more grateful for _anything_ in my life, and when I saw you walk out of that barn I just…I just…fuck…" her boots flew off one at a time, thunking into the tree on either side of Kakashi's head. "I just wanted to stay in that embrace _forever!_ I've felt you watching me and I thought, stupidly, that it was because you were feeling this _thing _between us. But no." She lobbed her shorts as hard as she could as him, panting hard.

"Is this not enough!" she was shaking with outrage and screaming at near the top of her lungs.

Kakashi was sitting so still he could have been part of the tree; his hand clutched against his bruised jaw and his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets.

He couldn't remember how to blink.

In only her breast-bindings, panties and gloves stood Sakura, arms akimbo, glaring at him expectantly.

He couldn't remember how to speak…

"Well?" she glowered pacing towards him. "Fine! I suppose the tattoo's are quite small," she gestured at the mock-tattoo on her hip, "they could be hiding anywhere…" Her fingers were suddenly clawing at the bandages strapping her chest flat, pulling and stretching the fabric until it loosened. She impatiently tugged the mass of white down to her waist, exposing her small pert breasts to Kakashi's astonished stare.

His mouth was working up and down but no sound was coming out.

Her leather gloves landed in his lap.

She spun around and hitched the fabric of her panties up to expose her backside for his inspection.

"Trust me now? Or shall I gut myself so you can make sure they didn't tattoo my intestines!"

It was at that moment, when Sakura turned to pick up her clothes, the red haze of her anger slowly dissipating and a growing awareness of what she had just done creeping over her, that she noticed Kakashi's ninken amongst the foliage, their heads cocked to the side in curiosity.

Then she noticed the rest of the team.

Yamato was staring up at the tree-filtered sunlight as if trying to burn the image from his mind, his hand clapped firmly over Genma's mouth. Genma's hand was clapped over Naruto's eyes and Sai was busy sketching, looking up every now and then to check proportions. Owl, the purple haired ANBU, seemed to be sending out waves of karmic sympathy.

"Great. Just great. That's amazing," Sakura repeated glumly, gathering her clothes and stomping off bare foot into the forest in nothing but a faded pair of rather large 'Sunday morning' panties. She didn't look back.

The group moved cautiously toward Kakashi as he repeatedly pinched his own arm.

"Wake up…wake up…"


	20. Chapter 19: Misplaced Trust

_Update no jutsu! Don't kill me, I have been a bed-ridden germ-bag. _

_Huge thank you to **Moderndayportia** for being the god of all things Beta and reminding me to actually post this...*cough*...and also **ShipperTrish **for back-betaing my earlier chapters! thank you to readers and reviewers, favouriters and lurkers, you guys are all wonderful rays of sunshine. Enjoy!_

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**Chapter 19: Misplaced Trust**

To the young shinobi crouched outside on the pavement. The smell of the store room had been an unpleasant mix of sweat, filth and illness. Those deep fetid odours had dominated their senses, eradicating the more subtle scents which could only be detected after long years of experience in the medical field.

Well, not _that_ long.

Tsunade drew idle patterns across a dust coated shelf with a long, polished fingernail, leaving a dark swirling wake of exposed wood. Inhaling deeply, despite her reluctance to do so, she allowed the sweet, sickly smell to wash over her, filling her lungs and mouth with the top-notes of decay.

Underneath the pungent aroma of shoe leather, urine, faeces and sweat, there was an irony base-tone that was familiar to all experienced field shinobi and medics: the distinctive smell of raw meat, not yet rotten. It was the same fragrance that defined a butcher shop; sugary, metallic and almost _wet. _Somewhere in this cramped space there was a body.

In the blistering heat a corpse would start to bloat and stink within forty-eight hours, and, judging from the smell, only the first stages of decomposition had started.

Tsunade's quick, intelligent eyes swept around the small room once more before flicking down to the grimy hardwood floorboards. There. One of the long boards bounced slightly under the tap of her heel. She raised a hand and instantly her ANBU guard were at her side, the two tall men not reacting at all to the stench.

She sighed before declaring, "I want to find out what's under these floorboards."

She didn't. Not really. Turning on her heel, the Hokage strode purposefully through the store front and out into the baking sunshine.

Shizune was kneeling on the pathway with her black yukata pooling around her. Brow knitted in concentration, her hands glowed with a gentle green light as she scanned the still and pale form of the tiny girl on the stretcher.

"She needs medical attention immediately, but her body is rejecting my chakra. It's reacting as if I am administering a poison."

Tsunade's voice came out tighter and more aggressive than she meant it to, "Get her to the isolation wing. I want her on life support. I want as many guards as we can spare and the _second_ she becomes lucid I want Ibiki to find out what the hell she was up to."

She ignored the angry growl from Konohamaru, who was being forcefully held in place by Hanabi.

"Yes Tsunade-sama." There was a soft scuffling as another two guards lifted the stretcher and followed Shizune to the hospital. Tsunade watched them disappear down the road in silence before turning her attention to the hyperactive genin who was shaking with fury.

"Say what you want to say, brat." She sighed, fixing her hands on her hips in preparation for the inevitable confrontation.

Konohamaru leapt from his perch, dragging a startled Hanabi up with him.

"You're going to have her interrogated!" he bawled, thrusting his jaw forward.

_No sense of respect. _

"She is an enemy Konohamaru, and if she doesn't co-operate she _will _be treated like an enemy."

"B-but she's sick! She needs help!"

Not for the first time, Tsunade found herself comparing the young Sarutobi to a certain orange-clad ball of energy. Really, only Naruto and _this _brat would choose to see an enemy as a friend. A sharp pang of concern shot through her, and not for the first time she felt her thoughts moving towards Team Kakashi. She hoped they were going make it home in one piece. She hoped that Tenzou's team would come through for her. She told herself that this concern was due to the fact that Konoha couldn't afford to lose one of its most prolific teams, but she knew she was lying.

She cared about each member of that team far beyond what was dictated by professionalism.

Tsunade curled her fist, planning to bop the petulant child on the head; shinobi couldn't afford to be emotionally invested, but she was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a masked figure by her side.

Sighing she turned towards him and raised an eyebrow, "Well?"

"There are three bodies inside and parts of a fourth. They have been...dismembered. From the remnants of clothing, I think it's safe to assume the deceased were Konoha shinobi." The ANBU stated flatly.

Tsunade felt the blood drain out of her face. "Do you have any idea who they are?" she asked trying to keep her voice indifferent.

"They are disfigured beyond recognition."

"I want dental records, I want blood typing, I want to know the identities of my missing shinobi NOW!" she bellowed at him. To his credit, the masked figure only shrank away _slightly_ before nodding and retreating back into the building.

Her heated gaze slid back towards Konohamaru who was looking both shocked and confused.

"Will you be so concerned about this girl if you find out she is responsible for murdering someone you know? A teacher, a teammate, a friend?" The Hokage's voice was icy and hard.

The boy dropped his gaze to his feet as he awkwardly toed at a pebble.

"I didn't think so." Tsunade's long elegant fingers came up to rub her temples; her voice was softer when she next spoke. "Well done both of you for finding the girl and alerting me so quickly. You did a good job. Now I want you to find me Umino Iruka, tell him I need the roster of which teams were due to return from missions, when, and which teams have failed to check in. Let's see if we can identify our men that way. I swear the mission room has gone to hell in a hand basket without him manning the fort. The trainee he has left in his stead is god-awful."

Hanabi's lilting voice drew her attention. "Hokage-sama, Iruka-sensei has been busy organising and cataloguing the civilians, he was quite busy last time we saw him. Perhaps we could send over Kotetsu-san or one of the other mission room staff?"

Tsunade couldn't help the small curl of her lips as she plotted her next move.

"Tell Iruka-sensei that if he adds this to his list of responsibilities, I'll throw a chair into our deal." With that she strode away toward the hospital, her expression darkening again.

Konohamaru and Hanabi watched their Hokage depart with bemused expressions.

"Chair?" He asked curiously, turning towards the Hokage mountain.

The Hyuuga merely shrugged in an uncharacteristic display of confusion causing her hair to bounce around her shoulders.

Gingerly Konohamaru reached forward to weave his fingers into her long dark hair.

"What are you doing?" she asked narrowing her eyes at him, her hand snapped up to snatch his arm around the wrist. "Your familiarity is unsettling."

Gulping lightly Konohamaru sucked in a quick breath between his teeth. "You have sticky buns in your hair...sorry."

Hanabi's right eye twitched twice and then slowly the tight set of her mouth relaxed and her grip loosened.

"Very well. Continue."

It was hard to remain dignified when someone was tugging and pulling at her hair to remove globules of syrupy pastry, but _somehow_ Hanabi managed it and Konohamaru noticed with admiration.

* * *

His shirt was sticking to his body like a second skin, an uncomfortable, sweat soaked second skin, but at least the sun was beginning to dip towards the tree line, taking with it the worst of the heat.

Kakashi sighed, casting a cursory glance around at his extended team. Sakura had taken point, moving ahead of their group, thankfully now fully clothed. Although Kakashi was sure that her haste to run ahead of the pack was more to do with her embarrassment over the earlier incident than eagerness to lead the way, she hadn't so much as looked at anyone since her impromptu striptease... He shook his head from side to side to dispel the unwanted image that laced across his vision. Who knew that large grey panties could be so...

"Amazing."

_Exactly._

_wait..._

"Fantastic, awesome, incredible..._unfair_!"

"Huh?" Kakashi asked shaking his head more vigorously.

Genma drew up alongside him, matching him stride for stride as they wove quickly through the trees.

"I don't know how you do it."

Kakashi made a_ tsking_ sound low in the back of his throat. He really didn't have patience for this.

"A normal guy would buy a girl dinner, send her flowers, you know, a bit of romance, a bit of effort, and then after months of abuse to the wallet and long discussions about feelings, if you're lucky, you might get to see her with her top off." Genma's elbow jabbed him painfully in the ribs, "But you? Oh no, _you_ just have to piss 'em off and the clothes go flying!"

Shrugging Kakashi answered, "It's a gift."

Smirking crookedly Genma inclined his head towards the shock of pink that could be seen darting from branch to branch in the distance. "Do you think she's okay?" There was a hint of concern hidden behind the layers of amusement.

Kakashi didn't immediately answer; instead, he dropped out the trees and leant against a thick trunk, he pulled out a senbon to dig the dried blood from under his sore nails. "She'll get over it, she'll probably get over it faster than Naruto." They looked over their shoulders to appraise the Kyuubi-container, who was quickly gaining on them and still sending waves of killing intent towards the back of Kakashi's head. "Sakura is a professional; she'll understand I was just doing my job as a team leader."

"What about your job as a friend?"

Kakashi brought a gloved hand up to rub the back of his head in a familiar soothing gesture. Genma had a point: what would happen if this breach of her trust was left to fester? If Kakashi was brutally honest, despitethe circumstances, the torture and the near death experiences, he had rather enjoyed the time they had spent together these last few days. He had become aware of the shift in their relationship the moment he found her, or rather, she found him, back at the Nakamizu Estate. And hadn't she acknowledged it in her furious tirade? Hadn't she acknowledged _'the thing'_ between them days ago when she had tried to kiss him on the hotel bed? Their bond had evolved into something new and uncertain. He was constantly aware of her; her presence a persistent prickle against his senses, an itch, an irritation...a _'thing'_ as Sakura had so eloquently put it. It was a fierce and unfamiliar sensation that left him feeling agitated, useless...a little bereft.

And then she'd taken off her clothes.

He didn't really know what to do about it. He didn't know if he wanted to encourage it.

"Stop over analysing Hatake. Just go make nice, yeah?" Genma cut in, plucking the grimy senbon from Kakashi's grasp and wrapping his lips around the blunt end of it.

Kakashi's nose wrinkled in distaste before admitting, "I don't really know what to say."

"Well you can ask her to fix that jaw of yours for a start. I can barely understand a thing you're saying."

* * *

Shizune wiped a shaking hand across her damp forehead and leaned against the large window for support, its coolness soothing against her burning skin. The surface fogged over with each hot exhalation, the room beyond distorting into an abstract swirl of muted neons. Gradually her heavy breathing evened, and only then did she turn to meet the measured stare of her mentor and Hokage.

Tsunade looked drawn, the usually faint lines around her eyes and mouth more pronounced than usual.

"Report," She said shortly, turning her attention back to the glass, and more importantly, to the girl hooked up to countless wires and bleeping monitors.

Shizune wiped away the condensation with her long sleeve and straightened herself. "The patient's condition is stable for now but for how long I cannot say. Her body is breaking down, the pressure of so much chakra in her system is causing massive internal failure. The addition of my chakra only seemed to speed up the process. It's as if...it's as if the chakra is eating her alive."

"So this chakra source is a foreign element?"

Shizune shook her head empathically. "No, not at all, the chakra is hers, but her body doesn't have the means to control the surplus. It's feels similar to how the Kyubbi's chakra attacks Naruto's system when released...but I'm afraid I can't tell you much more than that. Every time I try to do a thorough examination her vitals go critical. At the moment I am using medicinal methods to stabilize her."

"Are you able to wake her? How long do we have?" Tsunade asked, pacing the small observation room, her heels slapping out a beat against the flooring.

"I wouldn't like to try it just yet, I'd like to see if there is any improvement before attempting to wake her," Shizune bit down on her lip in frustration, "but it would be better to act soon, she could have hours left or it could be days. There's no way to tell."

Shizune winced as her mentors pacing accelerated, the snapping of her high sandals becoming louder.

"This is unacceptable, I need to know who our murdered shinobi were. I need to know if they were targeted or if they simply got in her way, I need to know what the hell these girls are doing in my village!" Tsunade bellowed, forcing Shizune to shrink against the glass.

Suddenly, a very uncharacteristically flushed Shikamaru burst into the room, skidding to a halt just in time to stop himself from face-planting into the Hokage's ample bosom.

Tsunade growled and, grabbing him by the collar, frog marched him back to the doorway; she turned to bellow down the corridor at the small group of ANBU guards stationed outside. "I told you no one! No one gets in here without my say so!" then focusing her fiery gaze back on the disorientated tactician she screamed at the top of her lungs, "What the hell do you want?"

Shikamaru's normally listless face was full of undisguised worry, and not only because he was being man-handled by the most terrifying women (next to his mother and Ino) he had ever known. Slowly Tsunade released her hold on him, her rage dissolving as she took in his grave expression and straightened his flak jacket.

"Well, what is it?" she prompted, exhaling through her teeth. She had a bad feeling about this; Nara Shikamaru did not get flustered without good reason, usually because getting upset was simply too much effort for the young special jounin. But, if the telltale pungent aroma of liquorice tobacco lingering around his collar was any indication, something had upset him very much.

Tsunade squared her shoulders.

Shikamaru's next words were honestly the last thing she wanted to hear. "Hokage-sama, we have a problem."

* * *

Umino Iruka squeezed through the tightly packed throng of impatient and perspiring ninja. He could feel the weight of their heavy irritation at being packed into the narrow corridors like sardines, and many of them, mission-worn and exhausted, did smell rather fishy.

However, once he was spotted working his way through the countless bodies, a low murmur of appreciation rippled through the group and they parted like an outgoing tide, pressing themselves flush against the walls to allow him access to the mission room.

"Thank the gods."

"Iruka-sensei, finally some answers!"

"This is getting ridiculous..."

Iruka allowed himself a small private smile, waving a hand above his head in acknowledgement. It was nice to be appreciated and even nicer to be appreciated for something he usually received so much stick about. Well this would teach all those uppity jounin not to underestimate the importance of admin. That thought almost completely dispersed the cloudy fatigue that had settled low across his shoulders.

More of the waiting shinobi parted before him, greeting him with warm and grateful smiles, and finally the subject of so much disorder came into view.

A small thatch of red spiky hair could be seen bobbing into view over a mountainous mound of paperwork, which spread out across a desk and swayed precariously against the breeze of a small electric fan. Piles of colour coded folders where stacked against the desk legs. A jumbo packet of metal staples and another of paperclips had fallen and now surrounded the desk in a wide semi-circle like a protective barrier of miniature caltrop'. Iruka wondered if this was intentional.

"B-bare with me Inuzuka-san...just one second...where is it? I swear I had it here just a minute ago."

The answering snarl was enough to let Iruka know that he would have to interfere if he wanted to avoid bloodshed.

A bandaged hand shot up between two particularly unstable looking paper towers to seize a small scrap of yellow from a third pile.

"Aha!"

It was inevitable. Iruka closed his eyes as the stack of paper buckled and slammed into one tower and then the other, the steady stream of air from the electric fan pulling the falling sheets up into a demented waltz.

"Oh...Gods...Oh my..." squeaked the poor desk clerk.

Iruka opened his eyes to see his replacement bent over the desk, her arm pinned firmly behind her back by Inuzuka Hana who was foaming at the mouth in agitation.

"Having trouble Amaya?"

"Iruka sensei!" the red-headed girl exclaimed, her eyes watering as her arm was pulled up further, her thin framed glasses bent into a diagonal across her nose, "Please, you have to do something, they're all crazy!"

Inhaling deeply Iruka summoned his most assertive teachers voice, "Inuzuka-san, you will not threaten, maim or otherwise terrorize the desk workers is that clear!?" immediately Hana's grip loosened and she stepped back, a sheepish expression appearing on her wolfish features, "As for the rest of you, please form an _orderly _queue and we'll see if we can get back on track!"

Iruka strode forwards, carefully avoiding the improvised caltrop barrier, and took up position on the far side of the desk next to the shaking form of Amaya. The young chunin radiated relief, rubbing her strained arm and readjusting the bandages encasing her fingers. Paper cuts, most likely.

Plucking up a small bundle of yellow papers from the white sea around his feet, Iruka licked his thumb and expertly flicked through them. Tsunade-sama seemed to think she needed to bribe him to achieve results, but he knew it was her way of showing appreciation. He _had_ been awake for around sixty hours now and had taken on the workload of a least six men, but he didn't need offers of exquisitely hand carved furniture to motivate him when the situation in the village was this grave. Still...the thought of a sculpted oak armchair with lavish midnight blue upholstery sent a little shiver of pleasure through him.

"Right, Team's one to five?" he raised his gaze as the required teams pushed their way forward. "You are required up at the Hokage monument to work in rotation with the other teams catering to the civilians." He tugged a thin drawer open, extracted a red rubber stamp and printed 'approved' across the top, then rolled the sheets into a neat tube and tossed it to Hana. She smiled toothily and filed out with the other squads. Without pause Iruka's hands automatically worked through the chaos, immediately retrieving the next mission order, a deep red scroll. He stared at the seal which marked this mission as highest priority.

"Amaya, how long has this been sitting here?" he asked patiently. "This was delivered on behalf of the Hokage herself wasn't it?"

Amaya, who was now crouched by his feet trying to bunch the papers together into an orderly fashion, blanched and fixed him with glistening wide eyes. "I d-didn't even see i-it...oh...t-there's just been so much to do! ...and I just..."

Large fat tears started spilling down her face. Some people just couldn't handle the mission room.

"Well no harm done I am sure," Iruka soothed, adopting the tone he used when comforting hurt children. "We'll get it sent out right now. Why don't you...err...pick up those staples before someone loses a toe." He cracked his finger along the loose waxed seal, which came away easily after being kicked around the floor for God knows how long, and unfurled the scroll along the desk.

"Registration number: zero, one, two, six, one, two. Hyuuga Hinata. Registration number: zero, one, two, five, eight, seven. Hyuuga Neji." His two former students moved through the room with the easy grace that came so naturally to members of the Hyuuga clan. "You are to meet Nara Shikamaru at the Nara Estate as soon as possible. Here is the list of off duty ninja you are to gather on your way." He rerolled the scroll, stamped the approval and handed it to Neji who in return gave him a short perfunctory nod.

"Thank you Iruka-sensei." Hinata's gentle voice barely carried across the desk as she turned to follow her cousin.

Iruka continued working through the paperwork, approving new missions, the large majority of which included stationing units at various guard posts and generally heightening security throughout the village, but there was also cataloguing to be done and reports to be collected from ninja just returning from external missions. The work load gradually lessened. Iruka flew through the tasks until only two organised piles remained. One for outgoing and one for incoming. Amaya had stopped crying and was now sitting at the adjacent desk, quietly sorting the last of the folders into alphabetical order. He would really have to get someone to come and help her when he returned to manage the civilians. Letting a girl who usually did the photocopying or made the coffee, run the mission room had obviously been a grievous error...if her strange concept of 'alphabetical' was anything to go by.

Finally Iruka folded up the completed roster and glanced at the eight names still outstanding; the list of ninja who had not made it home from their missions yet.

Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi and Sai were there, their names automatically jumping out at Iruka, he felt an immediate rush of relief that at least the bodies couldn't have been theirs, Kakashi's dog ruining his beloved desk had alleviated that concern. He just hoped they were safe. Underneath were the names of four others who should've reported in by now, they were two days over their scheduled return. Hopefully these names would help Tsunade-sama identify the bodies. The idea that the threat they were preparing so diligently for was already in the village sent a shudder of unease through him.

* * *

She felt him slowly gaining on her, his familiar white hot chakra pressing at the back of her skull. But Sakura would not slow down for him, not a chance in hell. It was immature but she quickened her pace anyway, darting up through the branches and slipping through breaks in the foliage in the hope that he would get the message. She did _not_ want to speak to him. Or anyone else for that matter. He caught up with her nonetheless, his long strides and quick reflexes putting him alongside her in a matter of seconds. She felt heat creep up her neck and around her cheeks but continued to stare resolutely ahead. She subtly tried to hitch up her slipping breast bindings, in her hasty retreat earlier she hadn't had time to dress properly.

If he expected her to acknowledge him he had another thing coming.

_Please not yet, please just leave me alone. Just let me get home...just a few miles more of silence._

If he could hear the message she was trying to send him telepathically, he gave no indication. The dull smack of his sandaled feet against the branches following hers only a split second later. Why wasn't he saying anything? Her teeth ground together in frustration. If he was going to be obnoxious and interrupt her pitiful self-loathing then he could at least say what he was going to say and then leave. her. alone.

"Sakura..."

Great, he was using that_ we've-got-something-important-to-discuss _tone of voice. He was serious...and lisping a little. If he kept this professional then perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, at some point she would have to address the problem and wasn't it better to get it out the way?

'_So you got an eyeful of underneath my underneath and I got a bit fresh with your genjutsu...no worries, it was all in a day's work, yeah?'_

Heat rushed back into her face with renewed vigour, she felt him draw closer when a strangled sob escaped her. As long as he stayed away from the topic of her...

Emotional slip up? Moment of lunacy?

'_Love confession?' _something traitorous whispered in the back of her mind.

She wasn't sure what it was but she did _not _want to talk about that. If she ignored it, it would go away. Unlike him.

He continued on in a more casual drawl, the impediment in his speech becoming more obvious, "...I wanted to talk about what you said– "

_fuck fuck fuck!_

"–and I want you to know that I do trust you, I trust you with my life. However, I don't trust our ememy. I needed to be sure, Sakura." He sounded sincere. Sakura realised that this was an apology.

The anxious knot in her stomach loosened a little and a palpable sense of relief ran through her limbs.

"I understand," she said shortly "you were only doing your job, but for an Elite, you were so damn clumsy about it! I feel like you are always underestimating me, you should know by now that only high-level forms of genjutsu work on me. I can't believe you would try and get away with something so rudimentary...and inappropriate. I deserve more respect than that."

In her periphery she saw him lift his hands in a mollifying gesture, "I know. Can we just put it down to lack of proper sleep and my charming idiosyncrasies?"

Sakura lifted her nose in the air and flicked her hair back dismissively.

"Sakura, I promise on my honour as a shinobi, that next time I trap you in a genjutsu it will be of the most horrific and aggressive type imaginable. I will not underestimate you again."

She turned to regard the man moving beside her with a cool look and instantly regretted it. His hand was on his chest, held in a mock salute, his visible eye was almost swollen closed and an ugly bruise was blooming above his mask, turning darker where it disappeared beneath the fabric. The mask itself was looking tight and askew due to the unnatural bulge along the right side of his jaw.

If Sakura was a lesser person she would have left him like that, she would have gladly let him haul himself over to the hospital she knew he hated so much and would have watched with undisguised glee as inexperienced trainee medics attempted to get that infernal mask off him.

But Sakura was Sakura. And Sakura was a medic. She grumbled unintelligibly before spinning on a dime and dropping through the trees onto the forest floor. Unsurprisingly Kakashi landed next to her only a moment later.

"Come here and I'll heal you." She tried her best to maintain a detached wall of superiority, but concern was quickly slipping through the cracks.

Overhead the rest of the team sailed by, followed by the ninken, Kakashi's lofty wave signalling them to continue.

Naruto's growled warning of "Molest her again and I'll kill you!" floated down on a warm breeze before he was tugged away by Genma.

Sakura felt a small spike of trepidation needle her in the chest at the prospect of being alone in the woods with Kakashi again. Was he intending to confront her about..._the thing_ now that they were alone?

She wrung her hands together nervously before asking, what she hoped, would throw him off balance.

"Mask off please."

His head tilted sideways in incredulity as if she has just asked him to remove his head.

"Kakashi, if you want to have some inexperienced junior medic poking you in the face then by all means, carry on. From the look of the swelling I would say that you have a mandibular fracture but without checking I can't be sure. The impact of my fist hitting your face could have caused a network of smaller fractures to run up towards your eye socket, giving you that unattractive squint you are sporting right now." Kakashi managed to look slightly affronted through said unattractive squint. "If left untreated, pressure could build up behind your eye and render you blind. I need the mask off to check for those tiny spidery fractures."

Kakashi still showed no sign of complying; his body language told her that his fight or flight instinct was kicking in. His lackadaisical stance was wider, his feet planted slightly further apart, his shoulders shifting minutely.

She exhaled through her teeth, clucking her tongue impatiently, "I won't look you silly baby!"

Turning her back on him she slipped a hand down her top, yanking loose an end of her ill-fitting breast bindings, she began to wriggle them free, pulling them into a messy bundle around her neck. She tugged the cotton bandages up over her face, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the sweat wet fabric she secured them tightly around her eyes. Pleased that she was sufficiently blind she spun back towards him and held her hands out expectantly.

The silence was unbearably long, she began to feel awkward and exposed without the most important of her senses. What if he had just left her there? Standing like a lemon in the middle of the forest with her breast wrappings secured around her head? She fought the urge to peak, to make sure she hadn't been left alone.

Kakashi watched Sakura for a long time, forcing his gaze to stay above her collar bone. He tried to ignore the gentle rise and fall of her chest that looked fuller without the constriction of her wrappings. He tried to ignore that her sweat soaked shirt was clinging to those gentle curves. He tried to ignore the flashbacks that once again laced across his vision; her breasts had looked pale, firm yet supple under the dappled sunlight when she had thrown her clothes into his lap. He ignored the heat that licked up his spine. He looped his index finger into the rim of his mask and tugged it down around his throat.

Sakura had almost given up. She was about to tear off the makeshift blindfold and smack him in the face again for being so childish...although it was unlikely she'd get so lucky a second time. She was _trying _to accept his apology, trying to put this whole incident behind them before they entered the Village gates. This healing session was important; if he accepted her help it meant he trusted her again, which meant she could trust him again. If she did this then they could go back to how it was before. She would be Sakura the hot tempered teammate again, Sakura the mednin. Nothing would have changed. They could go back to normal. An understanding and clarity filled her thoughts at that moment. This was about so much more than healing her team leader. It was about fixing whatever had gone wrong between them, not only in the woods a few hours ago, but before then. Kakashi had planned this; he was giving her a chance to get them back on track.

Leader and subordinate. Kakashi-sensei and Sakura-chan. Normal.

She felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed. But it was the right thing to do.

She was just about to voice her impatience when his long rough fingers enveloped hers, his thumbs tracing small circles against her wrists. The contact was so sudden and unannounced that a sharp hiss left her lips unchecked, and then he was guiding her hands upward, very slowly. His gloves were soft against her knuckles, the leather warm.

Turning her wrist gently he pressed her open palms flat against his face, securing them in place with his much larger hands. Sakura's breath caught in her throat has his moved his grip down to her forearms, the light scrap of his blunt nails over her hot skin caused her skin to jump and tingle. She would have thought he was doing it deliberately if he were anyone else. She swallowed dry and splayed her fingers across his jaw and cheek carefully, the sensitive pads of her fingers pushing at a rough speckling of stubble. She shut out her wayward thoughts, fought the compulsion to let her fingers explore every contour of his face in the hope that it would shed some light on the great mystery that was Kakashi and channelled her energy. She felt rather than saw the light of her chakra seeping into his skin and minute flinch he gave against her as the healing process began. The fine lattice of fractures sealed, the swelling lessened, and during it all she was aware of the steady pounding of his pulse against her pinkie fingers.

Her task finished, she gave into temptation and smoothed her hands across his face and then ran a finger from the bridge of his nose to the tip, poking him lightly on the end and giving him a shaky smile.

"All done," She chimed pleasantly, "they'll be a tiny bit of bruising because I can't see to work, but nothing too grievous."

"Thank you." His voice was bright and clear without the very slight dampening of the mask, he sounded unfamiliar, his inflections crisper...he sounded closer than usual. Sakura wanted desperately to see him; her fingers itched to rip the bindings from her face.

"No problem." She carefully tried to extricate herself from his grip, frowning under the cloth when his hands wouldn't budge.

There was a ghosting of his warm breath against her lips, a quiet whisper of a sigh that sounded like a decision being made or hastily ignored, and then a sudden heat around her cheeks as his hands moved from her arms to frame her face. Sakura had barely registered his movement when his mouth was suddenly pressing against hers, the bristly coarseness of the stubble on his chin causing her mouth to open in a surprised gasp. A low purr that sounded positively feline reverberated around her as Kakashi took this as a sign of acquiescence to deepen the kiss, his tongue ran into her mouth, his fingers stroking languidly around the shell of her ear.

Sakura's heart suddenly shot into overdrive, a deep swell of confused arousal pulling tight in her abdomen. Her fingers were weaving into the mask cowling around his throat...whether to push him away or pull him closer she couldn't quite decide.

It was closer.

Definitely closer.

Her own tongue met his in defiance, wet and warm, her hands dipped down to run over his shirt, pulling and pinching. She heard herself moan, low and needy. The sound someone else would make. Someone older and bolder.

And then the proverbial rug was snatched out from under her; he disappeared.

Her breath was coming in short erratic gasps. Her fingers frantically tugged away the fabric; the warm orange glow of the sunlight filtering through the trees bloomed to meet her astonished gaze. She was blushing furiously, her chest was heaving...she wound her fingers into the mess of bandages, if only to keep them occupied. She found herself adrift, unable to string a sentence together. She looked at him beseechingly.

Of course he had his mask back on, his jaw and eye once again looking like they were in proportion to the fest of his face, only a slight reddening around his eye indicated a recent injury. His hands were stuffed in his pockets. He looked bored.

How could her perception have been so wrong? there she had been, thinking that he was using their little healing session as a way to re-establish their respective roles and to re-establish trust...when really he was using it as an opportunity to stick his tongue down her throat! How was this helping matters?

Some genius he was. Now she was even more confused.

She finally found a voice, but it sounded nothing like her own, "W-what the hell...What the hell Kakashi!?"

Kakashi held up a single finger, turning to meet Yamato as he flew down from the trees to stand between them, he was breathing as hard as Sakura.

"Kakashi, the dogs, they've sensed something up ahead...something big."

Kakashi cocked his head to one side in question. "Hm? What kind of big?"

"A huge amount of chakra, just south of here, in the Nara forest."

Kakashi nodded gesturing widely with one hand. "Lead the way."

Yamato leapt back into the trees leaving Kakashi and Sakura to trail after him.

Sakura collected herself quickly pulling chakra into her feet, she sprung into the canopy a moment after Kakashi, struggling to keep up with the pace Yamato was setting.

"Are you going to tell me what that was about?" she grumbled flatly, finding it hard to look him in the eye.

Of course he didn't answer her. She _really_ wanted to punch him again.

"Naruto told you not to molest me...he will kill you if he finds out." Sakura whispered heatedly at the back of his neck.

Kakashi's head tilted towards her, his voice level and low and ever so slightly muffled again.

"Then I'll just have to _trust _that you won't tell him."

Sakura couldn't restrain the pleading whimper that escaped her, nor the overwhelming sensation that she was suddenly in over her head. She pushed down the rising panic that was demanding her to stop, demanding to know what the hell he was playing at. Instead she focused her attention on the steady rhythm of her footfalls and followed after her _ex_-sensei.

* * *

_AN: Caltrop are those spikey ninja throw-y down-y things._

_Hope you liked this one! ;)_


	21. Chapter 20: Home is where the heart is

_Hello Dear Readers,_

_I am so sorry for the enormous delay; let's just say real life has been throwing massive spanners in my direction. I am currently in the process of buying a flat...the paperwork is endless and boring! I am also looking for a new job and also my beta is currently embarking on a new fantastical journey of discovery, so I would appreciate your continued patience and understanding. Updates for all of my stories are in the works though – I haven't forgotten! _

_Thank you to Moderndayportia for her wonderful beta-ness as usual and I hope you all enjoy this chapter. _

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**Chapter 20: Home is where the heart is...**

The forest sped past underfoot, greens and browns mixing in a long smudge of olive. Yet again Sakura felt a surge of adrenaline spark through her limbs in anticipation of what lay ahead. The dull aching of her bones and joints was completely forgotten, and the exhausted cloudiness that had hung heavily over her head like a damp fog for the last three days had finally lifted, leaving only keen and jittery expectation behind.

The nervous excitement singing through her body could have been attributed to her encounter with the ever infuriating Hatake Kakashi, but as she bounded after him through the trees, she realised that, no, this need to break something – tear something apart – came not from her team leader's impromptu molestation, but from the volume of chakra crackling like a storm a short distance ahead of her.

She could tell her team-mates were feeling it too. Kakashi's shoulders were coat-hanger rigid, and his hands kept twitching minutely towards his weapons pouch. Yamato was much the same, his chin dipping low towards his chest in a subconscious attempt to protect the major arteries, and the two dogs that had decided to come back to shepherd them towards the source of power, whipped between her legs in a frenzy, the hair along their bent hackles jutting up defensively.

Sakura embraced the sensation, the primal instinct to fight, to attack, to kill – because otherwise she would be overcome with very real fear; something this powerful was very close to her home and, therefore, very close to the people she loved.

It was hard to distinguish specific signatures amongst the noise, but Naruto's strong energy came to her first, followed by those of the rest of her team, and then other familiar auras flickered one by one into her senses.

There was a sudden break in the trees, and evening sunlight flowed into the space like water into a bucket. Her arm came up to block the glare as she leapt to the forest floor. Naruto was at her side instantly, his fingers wrapping round her upper arm, "Sakura-chan, look!"

She did look, and as her eyes adjusted her mouth fell open.

There were maybe a hundred or more figures, shimmering and indistinct in the meadow ahead of her, their bodies blurred and stretched as if viewed through half closed eyes or the flame of fire. It was hard for Sakura to gauge the distance between herself and the figures because her sense of perspective was oddly flattened as she peered into the foggy distortion. For a split second, Sakura could have sworn she saw a translucent barrier appear, its surface tight and iridescent like cling-film spread across a bowl.

"What the hell..." she started, moving forward.

Her feet were caught mid stride by a sudden and uncomfortable pressure which spread up her legs and around her chest. A bird shot past her face and as it hit an invisible wall two feet in front of her it instantly burst into flames. Its small, blackened body dropped like a stone. A blue flash spread from the point of contact, arching up into the sky to highlight the shape of a large dome.

Slowly, carefully, Sakura was manoeuvred back into a standing position. With a substantial amount of effort, she turned her head to regard Nara Shikamaru.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he flatly drawled, jerking a thumb towards the clearing. Sakura felt her own arm mimic his gesture. "We have two men in the hospital after they tried the same thing. Troublesome jutsu."

The shadows wrapped around her loosened, spiralling down the column of her body and rapidly retreating back to their owner.

The skin between Sakura's eyes furrowed. "Shikamaru, what is it?"

She fought against the urge to reach out and run her hands through the dense air before her.

Kakashi's low voice answered, "Some sort of chakra field."

Shikamaru's head dipped in agreement. "Yes, it seems to be self-perpetuating although able to leech chakra from anything it comes into contact with: birds, insects, people. It sucks up jutsu like water through a straw...I've never seen anything like it."

"Are those people in there?" Sakura asked.

"All women," his eyes rolled at that. "We've counted eighty three of them so far, some of them armed in what looks like standard issue shinobi gear, some dressed in civilian clothing. We've started an inventory of their appearances and weapons, although even Neji and Hinata are having trouble focusing through the distortion of the field."

Sakura's eyes scanned the tree line, finally noticing the other people present. Genma and Sai were talking to Neji, whose intense white gaze was fixed on the figures in the meadow. Raidou and another older Jounin were erecting a wooden hide while Yamato had started building another with his dwindling chakra reserves. The edge of the clearing was buzzing with activity. Several other shinobi sat clustered in small groups, writing their observations down on long scrolls. Hinata was shooting quick glances towards Naruto while fumbling with a canteen of tea.

After a thoughtful hum, Sakura let loose a litany of questions, "Have they attacked? Have they moved? Have their numbers increased? What have they been doing? Do they appear..."

"Their presence was only discovered about two hours ago, but from what we've observed..._nothing_."

"Nothing?!" Kakashi cut in, his voice surprised.

Shikamaru gave a long rolling shrug before stuffing his hands deep in his pockets, mirroring Kakashi's pose, and scuffing his foot against the parched grass. "Yes, nothing. It's like they are just _waiting_ for something. They haven't so much as looked in our direction. It's like we don't matter. Or they can't see us. I'm trying to work on a way to bring down the barrier...but so far nothing is working."

"Waiting for what though..." Kakashi mused, scratching his fingers along the hem of his mask.

"That's the big question. I could use your help on this Kakashi-sensei."

"Hm. She's put you in charge?"

Shikamaru scoffed. "With my father out on a long term mission, it seems that the Hokage thinks this would be a good test of my abilities. We are short-staffed, what with the civilian evacuation."

Kakashi gave a short nod of understanding, "After I hand in my report, I'll request the assignment."

"Thank you," Shikamaru said over his shoulder as he turned towards a group of shinobi huddled in the shade of a giant oak, their laps overflowing with scrolls.

Kakashi turned his attention to his dogs sniffing around the barriers edge. "Thank you, Pakkun, you can leave now." Pakkun gave a perfunctory bark before disappearing into a small cloud of smoke, and the other summons quickly followed suit.

"Come on," Kakashi called, raising his voice to address the team as a whole. He leapt back into the trees, heading down the gentle incline of craggy moss-carpeted rock towards the village's main gates.

* * *

Tsunade's fingernails flexed against the rough wood grain of her office windowsill. With her back to the group of exhausted looking shinobi, she allowed herself a long calming inhalation and blinked hard against the sharp sting that was irritating her eyes. She focused on the middle distance to clear her vision. Dust. Surely just dust.

There was a shuffle of feet behind her. A muted cough against fabric.

She released the lungful of air in a slow steady stream from between pursed lips that caused the blonde bangs framing her features to flutter. Then turning, she allowed her gaze to sweep over the group, lingering a little on Sakura and then Naruto, before settling on Kakashi. Her eyes prickled. Damn allergies.

Firstly, she addressed the ANBU contingent of the team. "Shiranui, that mask is for wearing on your face, not on the back of your head. I expect your full report in three hours. You may go."

Genma snapped the mask back over his face and, with Yugao and Yamato, somewhat grudgingly left the office. When the door clicked shut she gave Kakashi a sharp nod.

"Report." She demanded, with carefully schooled professionalism.

* * *

Sakura felt emotionally battered. They were finally home; finally back within Konoha's fortified walls. The journey from the Nara grounds to the Hokage's office had been short and uninterrupted, and while Sakura had never been so pleased to be home, she couldn't hold back the contradictory wave of homesickness that crashed over her.

The streets were eerily quiet without the usual hustle and bustle of the civilian tradesman selling wares and imported goods. The cafes had been shuttered and locked, their chairs sitting upturned on their tables. The ubiquitous scent of frying tempura mixing with the sugary odour of cinnamon baked apples from the many competing bakeries was strangely absent, and this lack of _colour_ seemed to have drained away much of what made Konoha...well, _Konoha_.

The Hokage tower held the same tight atmosphere of abandonment. Only key personnel were seen flitting through the corridors, all with their heads down and arms full - on their way to do something somewhere or another. The ANBU guards stationed at the entrances and exits looked jumpy and agitated, as if the last thing they wanted to be doing was standing around.

In the growing darkness outside, Konoha seemed smaller – claustrophobic even – without the usual sea of yellow light thrown up by the many stalls and streetlamps lining Konoha's roads.

Sakura fidgeted with the handle of a kunai in her pocket, throwing Naruto, whose eyes had glazed over about an hour ago, a sympathetic look.

Tsunade's previously clear desk was now littered with the various folders and files which Naruto and Sai had retrieved from the underground base near Taki. Some of the documents had become sodden and illegible from sewer water, but most had survived within the water-proofed interior of Sai's satchel. Sai was quickly and efficiently transcribing all legible information from the papers which had not been so lucky.

Kakashi hunched over a large folded map which Sai had retrieved, puzzling over the coloured key, while Tsunade flicked through the detailed records listing the abilities and achievements of Konoha's shinobi.

"I can't believe our enemy is privy to all this information, while we know literally nothing of their strengths." The Hokage's voice was tight. Sakura knew it would not be long before a bottle of saké found its way to the table.

"Aah, but we do. We know that the majority of the recruits are from Waterfall with next to no previous shinobi training. The whole conversion process is short...I'd estimate four to six weeks of intensive and invasive mind alteration in which the subjects are reprogrammed and then trained. So we can assume that their attacks will be limited to techniques inherent to the region – from what we've seen, largely water-based jutsu. These would be most suited to the subjects' natural abilities and to those teaching them. I did encounter a genjutsu user at the compound, but it is more likely that she was an initial recruit, part of the first wave used as reconnaissance,"

Kakashi scratched at his mask, hating the itch caused by being unshaven. He dragged the back of his wrist across his exposed eye, wishing he could just be asleep in bed.

"We know who their leader was. Kuma orchestrated this operation, and from the looks of it, ROOT was just as eager to put a stop to this as we were. Perhaps Danzou might co-operate and share some information?"

Tsunade snorted bitterly. "That'll go down well. But, I just might get the council's support on this one."

"Kuma-senpai informed me that there were others working within Konoha," Sai cut in. "We should organise a search of all personnel and civilians for the orchid tattoo."

Tsunade's lips drew into a grim line. "We are stretched enough as it is. I already have the pre-genin working like fully established ninja: organising the civilians and making sure their needs are attended to. The genin and chunin are overseeing them or on border patrol. People are overloaded. Our top priority is finding a way to break that barrier and remove the threat."

Sakura finally came alive. "Remove the threat? You mean slaughter them?" she whispered, her face aghast. "Y-you can't be serious? Our priority should be freeing these girls, helping them, not senselessly slaughter-"

Tsunade's sharp gaze cut off Sakura's impending tirade.

"Sakura," she said firmly and quietly, matching Sakura's own volume, "this is not a situation which lends itself to _helping_ people. There are just shy of a hundred enemy units gathered outside of our city gates. From the information presented here, it is clear that Kuma's objective was to create as much chaos and instability as possible. That means the death and '_slaughter_' of our men and women, and I will not allow it."

_Remove the threat. Enemy units. _

The leather of Sakura's gloves squeaked in protest as her fists squeezed into tight balls at her sides. Why was everyone so quick to see these young women as disposable? They had families; they had lives that had been erased by what Kuma had done to them. A fierce heat was curling around the back of her neck. The exhaustion. The adrenaline still pumping from the sight in the meadow. Her frustration... Her teeth ground together noisily.

Tsunade's eyebrows rose at her apprentice's thinly veiled impudence, and from the corner of her eyes she could see Naruto moving closer, ready to lay a calming hand on Sakura's shoulder.

Straightening, Tsunade crossed her arms over her large chest and stared coldly down her nose at the girl. "Fine then, out with it. You might as well get it off your chest."

Sakura forced herself to relax, visibly shaking off some of the anger, but the fire in her eyes still burned. She began to speak in a low and even tone, "Shishou, with respect, I feel that there is enough information available in this journal," she pulled the leather bound book from her weapons pouch and waved it at each person in the room, "to use to research a way to break the orchid seal. This innocent, largely civilian group of girls could be returned to their country, to their families! Isn't killing them when there are other options to explore as unemotional and cold as what was done to them in the first place? I am a _medic_," at this Sakura levelled an accusatory glare at Tsunade, "I believe in healing, I believe that killing them outright without even _trying_ to help them is...just...stupid!"

"Sakura. That's enough," Kakashi barked angrily, slamming his fist down on the table and making her jump. "You are totally out of line. This is your Hokage and she will be addressed with respect."

"-but Kakashi, you don't understand we-"

"No. _You_ don't understand." His voice was gravelly, and his exposed eye was uncharacteristically cold with anger. "Every enemy we fight has a country, or a home, or a family, or _something_ to fight for. _Every enemy_. Do you really think that every time we take a life we are taking the life of someone who is solely evil? I know you are not that naive. Whatever their situation, these girls _are_ our enemy. They intend to do us harm, and while they may not be responsible for their actions, they are a threat to _our_ country, to _our_ friends, and to _our_ families."

The heat at the back of her neck fanned out to cover the rest of her body. Sakura deflated, her head bobbing down so that her chin rested against her chest. With her pulse pounding in her ears and the needling sting of humiliation irritating her eyes, she studied the knots and cracks in the wooden floorboards. Was it disrespectful to have so directly questioned her Hokage? Yes. Was it made worse by Kakashi's firm admonishment? Definitely. But did this still excuse the death of all those young women if it could be helped? –Well, she didn't think so.

She couldn't look either of them in the eye. She needed sleep. Proper sleep.

"I-I apologize Shishou," she murmured half-heartedly. She sensed Naruto's presence at her side, his warmth making her feel slightly less alone. It was a wonder he hadn't spoken up about this – but for once Naruto seemed to be agreeing with the logical, cold conclusion.

Tsunade's heavy sigh cut through the thick tension in the room, and slowly Sakura raised her head to meet the half amused, half irritated expression etched into her Shishou's face. It made her look closer to her age, and Sakura felt her stomach lurch guiltily in response.

"Shizune!" Tsunade bellowed.

There was a long silence and then a shuffling of feet from the side office. The door opened and Shizune's brunette head bobbed into the room.

"Tsunade-sama?"

"Give Sakura the complete file on our patient. She will be taking over that case."

"Y-yes of course." Shizune bobbed back out of view, only to return seconds later with a thin file in the crook of one arm and a dozing Tonton cradled under the other.

Sakura looked to Tsunade questioningly as she took the file with both hands.

"We managed to detain one of them, although she is in no state to cooperate with us. That file documents our attempts to revive her in the hopes of sending her to interrogation. Since you seem to be so invested in the well-being of these initiates, I suggest you start work on the orchid seal. Her detainment cell and observation room are yours to do with as you wish."

"You're putting me in charge of her case?" Sakura asked disbelievingly while flicking through the sparse documentation.

"If you can get her to a lucid state – great. If you can find a way to undo the sealing and strip away the programming – even better. You are not the only one who would like a bloodless solution to this conflict." Sakura felt a shadow of a smile pull at her lips as Tsunade continued, "_But! _At the first sign of enemy incursion you are to take your place on the battlefield and offer medical support. I will not call off attempts to access these girls, and when we are successful, they will be dealt with. So if you can find a way to neutralise them, then you will need to do it quickly. This will be a test of your skills Sakura. From what I have seen of that journal, it looks like complete nonsense and I doubt those girls are going to hang around in their protective bubble forever."

Sai, stacking his notes perpendicularly to the edge of the great wooden desk, spoke up in that slow and measured way of his, "I would like to offer my assistance to Sakura for this task. I am the most familiar with Kuma-senpai's methods and could provide some insight into the programming techniques."

"Yeah, me too!" Naruto chimed. "I don't know anything about Kuma, but I could help anyway, right?"

"No," Tsunade stated flatly, "You will both be assigned to a patrol rota like everybody else. In your free time, you may do as you please. Now all of you, get the hell out of my office and get some sleep. You'll be notified if there are any developments."

Sakura, Sai and Naruto began to file from the room, and Sakura paused to look back at where Kakashi stood unmoving, his hip leaned casually up against the desk. He made a simple shooing gesture with a gloved hand without taking his one eyed gaze from the pile of papers. An irrational spark of anger found its way back into the nape of her neck. His dismissive attitude coupled with the way he had chastised her earlier...well it stung. He wasn't even going to look at her? So, maybe it was inappropriate to be worrying over it at a time like this –but she was confused, his anger was obvious. Had sticking up for her beliefs really caused this sudden drop in temperature between them? It felt like they had just taken two steps forward and ten steps back. Were they even going to _talk _about what he had done in the forest, or was this it? Was he just going to shun her and-

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto stage-whispered, jabbing her in the side with his elbow.

She scowled at him before snapping, "Fine, I'm coming." The door slammed behind her a little harder than necessary.

Tsunade clucked her tongue disapprovingly, and Kakashi couldn't agree more. Sakura was acting like a petulant teenager, which, when he thought about it (and he _really _didn't need reminding), she was.

"Idiot." Tsunade grumbled under her breath.

Kakashi blithely replied, "She's just tired."

"Not her! You, you idiot!"

Kakashi dropped the papers in shock, slicing his thumb on the corner of a manila envelope. "What did I do?" he grumbled, inspecting the bleeding flap of skin. Why did paper cuts always seem to hurt more than a stab wound? It was one of life's great mysteries.

"Are you just going to leave it like that? It's not like you to hold grudges...you know she is just going to go home and worry herself sick over it."

"She was being disrespectful," he defended.

"She was standing up for her principles. _You_ flew off the handle. It's obvious that this mission has caused some sort of friction between you both. It is unacceptable to allow this to fester. Teams need trust and cohesion."

Kakashi groaned dejectedly. He didn't want to be thinking about friction and cohesion with Sakura either.

"And what would you have me do?"

"Sort it out, whatever is causing all this tension. Fix it... the paperwork will still be here when you come back."

* * *

A strong, pervading wind ripped through the park, tugging Sakura's top tight against her body and causing the flaps of her medic apron to slap wildly around her legs. It took the edge off the night's humidity, but its strength and direction served as a precursor to something bigger. The rains were finally coming. Konoha desperately needed them; the grass underneath her feet was brittle and sun scorched. It was usually at this time of year that Fire country earned its name.

Sakura was almost home. A shortcut through the park took a good five minutes off her journey and was preferable to walking through the creepily quiet streets. Konoha was now a ghost town; its soul was with the missing people.

She couldn't wait to get home, shower, wrap herself up in a fluffy towel, and _not_ think about Hatake Kakashi.

Of course he had other plans.

She hadn't heard his approach over the howling wind and didn't feel his chakra until he was standing in the path several metres ahead of her.

The distance between them felt like a mile.

"What do you want?" she flatly demanded. The wind snatched away her voice, but Kakashi could lip read. He'd work it out.

"I didn't mean to upset you." He accounted for the fact that she couldn't read his lips by practically shouting.

She bristled defensively, "You didn't upset me. Why would I be upset? Sure, you kissed me in the forest, then ignored me, then cut me down. You only humiliated me in front of _everyone_. Why the hell would that upset me?"

Well that was certainly loud enough for him to hear, his hands fisted into balls but were quickly hidden out of sight in his pockets.

"You're being irrational and melodramatic. Don't you understand that there are more important things going on right now than what happens between us?" He pinched the bridge of his nose, "This is exactly why we shouldn't pursue this. It becomes difficult to separate the personal and professional. It might not be easy for you to underst--"

"Stop saying that I don't understand! I understand perfectly: _you_ fucked up! _You_ fucked up with me and now you're trying to run away from what _you_ did! It's not fair Kakashi, this can't all be on your terms."

"You are letting your emotions cloud your judgement. You should get some sleep, and you'll be less affected tomorrow," he responded evenly, but there was a small frown began to form between his eyebrows, it was quickly replaced by indifference, an expression he could pull on as easily as the dark fabric mask obscuring the lower portion of his face. She was getting to him; she knew it and it filled her with a sadistic sense of achievement.

"Good job Kakashi, great apology, I feel much better," she spat bitterly.

"Very mature, Sakura-chan."

Sakura hissed a breath through her pursed lips. She wanted to rip her hair out, hell she wanted to rip _his_ hair out. Her short fingernails bit into her palms as she tried to quell the rage shaking her system. He kept staring at her so dispassionately, kept shifting everything onto her shoulders. Well he had done this, _he_ had crossed that line. If he would only tell her what he was thinking, why he was being so damn _contradictory_, what did she have to do just to know where they stood?

She stamped towards him, invading his personal space until she had to crane her neck to stare him in the face. He didn't move or react to her sudden intrusion, only kept staring down at her with that same passive, bordering on bored expression.

Her chin jutted out defiantly. She met his tepid, uncaring gaze with one of her own.

There was only a sliver of space between them; above the loud wailing wind she could even hear his breathing, deep and rhythmic. There was a tension simmering under his skin, she could see it in the tick of his pulse–a barely visible fluttering of the skin-tight fabric around his neck.

Sakura reached out to place a hand against his chest and let her palm rest against the hard planes of his pectorals to feel the steady beat of his heart. He was warm in contrast to the frigidity between them. She spoke quietly and almost to herself, "You're pulling the maturity card again and it's just an excuse."

Her fingers slowly drifted down, brushing against his ribs then his abdomen. She felt his skin jump at her touch but his face remained stubbornly blank. She wanted a reaction...any reaction. Emboldened she continued, her fingers becoming surer as they moved lower still. Was he daring her? The challenge sent an electric chill down her spine. Would he stop her? Surely he would stop her.

She pushed her hand under his shirt, pressing her fingers against his burning skin and kneaded the string of muscle that dipped between his hip bone and the waistband of his pants. His eyes tightened incrementally. His breathing was getting heavier.

Tingling warmth stretched throughout her belly, a desire so unannounced that it made her own breath catch in her throat. Her fingers twitched against his skin as if trying to remind her brain of what they were doing. He didn't look quite so uncaring now. His focus was back on her mouth. It always seemed to be on her mouth. She licked her lips self-consciously and his vacant stare flared to life.

She was going to do it. She was going to do it, she was going to...

As her fingers slipped beneath his waistband, his hand enclosed around her wrist. Tightly, too tightly.

She resisted the urge to squirm as he removed her hand from him. He didn't release her wrist.

Sakura knew she was pushing her luck, knew that she should think of the consequences, but the conflicted, confused look in Kakashi's eye gave her the courage she needed. She sprung onto her tiptoes, pushing her body flush against his and leant up to whisper lowly into his ear,

"It looks as though you aren't as unaffected as you'd like to think."

The she wrenched her hand free and stormed towards home.

Kakashi watched her retreating form until she was totally swallowed by darkness. He stood there for an even longer while, allowing the wind to batter his body and cursing the erection Sakura had undoubtedly noticed when she had pressed herself against him.

* * *

"Didn't go so well?" Tsunade asked jovially as Kakashi lurched through the door looking paler than she had ever seen him.

"You could say that."

Tsunade swooped beneath her desk to pluck a tall bottle of saké and two large chipped coffee mugs from amongst a nest of papers. Kakashi's cocked an eyebrow at the oversized vessels.

"Mugs?"

"You look like you could use a stiff drink before I send you home to rest. Looks like you haven't slept in days."

In his opinion Kakashi didn't need a stiff anything. He needed a cold shower and a tranquiliser. "Paperwork, I have to do the paperwork."

"You can do it tomorrow."

"I have to file the report..." he gestured at the chaos surrounding them.

"You look like you haven't slept in days."

"Aah. That's because I haven't."

"Well, unless the village starts burning down, you will be getting a mandatory eight hours. You can come back tomorrow at nine, and on time— in fact, you'd better be early." Tsunade poured them both a generous helping of amber liquid and thrust the cup into his hands. Swirling the saké around, she took a deep inhalation while plonking herself down on her leather-backed chair.

"Mmm, this stuff it glorious, Jiraiya bought a crate of it back from Lightning a few years ago. You can practically taste the ionisation."

Tiredly, Kakashi scooped a pile of documents up from a wooden stool and deposited them haphazardly onto the desk, skewing Sai's careful arrangement. He perched awkwardly on its hard surface and slipped his fingers into the hem of his mask. He gave Tsunade a quick assessing look and she pointedly averted her gaze. He dragged the mask over his chin, wincing as the fabric snagged his coarse stubble, and took a moment to adjust to the intense assault on his olfactory system.

"Drink. Hokage's orders."

Tsunade was right; you could smell the ionisation in the saké...it smelt reminiscent of blood and the overlaying scent of alcohol instantly bought forward images of hospitals. Blood and disinfectant...He shook his head to clear the unpleasant association and forced the mug to his lips anyway. The burn was welcome against his lips, the fiery taste coating his throat as he swallowed. He hummed a little as the warmth spread through his body while his shoulders dropped even further into their custom slouch.

Tsunade's lips quirked up, "You might as well still be wearing that mask for all I can see through that stubble," she said glibly.

Kakashi felt his cheeks heat and resisted the urge to cover himself.

"You're not supposed to look," he flatly declared, draining his mug in one long gulp and moving to pull up his mask. His fingers stilled as Tsunade waggled the bottle at him.

"No, I guess not."

"Isn't getting blind drunk while swearing to protect the village from imminent attack a little...imprudent?" Kakashi said while the liquid flowed in gasping glugs into his mug.

"Ah, well you know it'll take at least five bottles to knock me out, and besides, I have no intention of getting blind drunk. I seem to recall, Hatake Kakashi, that you are a terrible lightweight."

"...so you're trying to take advantage of me?" he giggled at that and swirled the saké around with his index finger.

"Case in point."

He downed the second glass and then waved it at her expectantly.

"Come on then. Fill me up Buttercup," he sang breezily.

* * *

Sakura shuffled into the small observation room located in the restricted section of the hospital which was reserved for high priority cases, enemies with sensitive information, and protected witnesses.

She slid her pack off her shoulders and tossed it at the corner of the room, then took a weary look at her surroundings.

Living in the civilian quarter had its benefits: the roof traffic was quieter, her fellow shinobi were more likely to use actual doors than windows (lest they upset their civilian neighbours), and the buildings themselves felt more personable without the rigid monotony of shinobi accommodation. Generally, living amongst civilians meant that noise was minimal and that she was occasionally brought home cooked meals by some of her more kindly elderly neighbours. The down side was that rent was more expensive (but hell, that was the price you paid for begonia covered communal gardens and for neighbours that weren't constantly bleeding to death on your doorstep!) and that her apartment was situated a little further than she would have like from the Hokage monument and the hospital. Oh, and then there was the fact that during a civilian evacuation the power was cut and the doors padlocked. She had kicked the door in frustration until its hinges squealed and its surface buckled. She stopped short of ripping it open entirely. Was it too much to ask that she have a home to come _home_ to?

This had compounded her already foul mood.

In the end, she had managed to access her apartment without trouble by scaling the wall and slipping through her window, but without air conditioning, running water and electricity, and with no provisions in her fridge and her cupboards bare, she might as well have been roughing it on the forest floor.

So Sakura had grabbed her medical books, a pile of fresh clothes, and her sleeping bag and headed to the mission room (which appeared to be particularly chaotic) to see if any of her dear friends were off rota and would let her to crash on their sofa.

Ino was on patrol, as were the rest of her family, until tomorrow morning. Tenten was out off Konoha with team Gai on a retrieval mission, though they had probably been recalled already...and Hinata was up at the Nara grounds. This pretty much ruled out everyone she was comfortable with staying with. Naruto's couch would probably give her Ebola. And his bed? Well...no. Just no.

Sai was still in Root's clinical dormitories, and while he had his own large studio room complete with kitchenette, she didn't really fancy waking up tomorrow and enjoying a communal shower with god knows how many closed-circuit-cameras trained on her.

Tomorrow she would go over to Ino's and appeal to her sense of hospitality.

For now though, the hospital was a fine choice. The ANBU guarding the entrance to this area had assured her that they would find her a spare bed to sleep on. There were shower cubicles, a cafeteria, and she could wake up in a few hours and get straight to work on her patient.

Sakura looked through the one-way glass at the frail, wasted figure wired up to countless bleeping machines. She appeared stable; in fact, her notes indicated that she had been placed into a medically induced coma to prevent her condition from deteriorating further. This girl looked so young, so dwarfed by the monitors and thick cables. The oxygen mask strapped over her mouth swamped her petite features and the thin white gown sticking to her undernourished frame only served to bleach out her complexion more.

Sakura began unpacking, moving the entirety of her paperwork onto a steel, wheeled gurney which would do as a makeshift desk until she could procure one. Luckily, a fold-out chair was already stationed at the window between the observation room and her patients; she dragged it over and sat down, pulling the hem of her medic apron under her to avoid creases.

The _doctor's_ leather-bound journal stared up at her, and automatically her fingers reached to caress it's abused but loved surface. The leather was worn and warm to the touch, the natural webbed pattern that spiralled across it felt as defined as a fingerprint, totally unique. She flicked it open to the first page – a contents table, which had been continually altered and updated, it's carefully written itinerary scratched out and rewritten over and over again until it was a sprawling mess of chicken scratch and inky blotches. Sakura turned to the second dog-eared page, dated four months ago and titled:

'_Introduction of high Dopamine levels into the cognition and frontal cortex. Section one: Manipulating the Neurotransmitter systems.'_

A hastily jotted list of chemical compounds followed, as well as a layering of sticky post-it notes which all seemed to have variations of the same theme in red ink. There was a shopping list including napkins and dango stapled to one corner.

It was going to take forever to make any sense of this, but Sakura was excited by the challenge. Soon, the idea of sleep was forgotten, her anger over Kakashi's behaviour fell away. It was just her and her books and the quest for knowledge, and that was something she relished as her nose buried itself amongst the pages.

* * *

"Should be sleeping." Even though said quietly, the smooth if slightly slurred sound of Kakashi's words jolted Sakura from her deep concentration. Her heart leapt straight to her throat and the pen she had been sucking on exploded in her hand, spraying her notes and clothing with blue ink.

"Shit Kakashi! Don't sneak up on people like that!" she roared, jumping up from her seat and frantically dabbing at her ruined notes with the hem of her medic apron.

Kakashi lurched further into the room, his eyebrows dipping down in puzzlement.

"Sneaking is my job. Yes. It is."

Sakura sucked a frustrated breath through her teeth and turned to face him to find that he was suddenly standing far too close. She could feel the heat of his skin through his thin blue top as he pressed his chest against her arm to peer over her shoulder at what she was working on. Sakura's heart beat fell over itself in reaction to his proximity, her awareness suddenly tunnelling to the small area where his clothed torso met her bare arm.

He hummed, an odd mix of uncaring and curious, and the tremors worked their way through her arm and straight to her chest where they seemed to only exacerbate the frantic rhythm of her heart.

It had been a different story when she had so boldly challenged him earlier...but then that had been in her control. Or at least mostly in her control. The wide open space in the park had offered some security; she could run, she could shout. In the small observation room, wedged between a gurney and his warm body, she had nowhere to go.

"What do you want." She said shortly, hating how breathy her voice sounded.

"I went to your apartment. It was locked."

"...Why did you go to my apartment?" That was _not_ a hitch in her voice.

His head turned towards her. His tilted chin ghosting through her hair.

"They've evacuated that area. I found you here."

"That's not an answer Kakashi. And why did they even let you in? I haven't put you on the approved list yet."

"I know those boys. They were wet behind the ears when I knew them. They let me in because I know those boys." He sighed, his breath heavy with the smell of...what was that, alcohol?

Sakura shoved away from him, putting enough distance between them so that she could get a good look at his face. His visible eye was red and bleary and the eyelid that seemed perpetually at half mast looked even lazier than usual.

"Have you been drinking!? You have, haven't you!" Sakura gasped, her hands clamping onto her hips in annoyance.

Kakashi looked around, over his shoulder in a paranoid fidgety kind of way and then nodded once...and then giggled.

"Oh my Gods. Tsunade-Sama got you trashed didn't she? You stink!"

The Copy-Nin managed to look mildly affronted by that accusation, and then immediately tried to take a subtle sniff at his underarms. Sakura growled in the back of her throat.

She injected as much venom as she could into her next question, "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"

"What are _you _doing here?" he returned with a happy eye crease.

"Working. Now go."

He seemed to consider this for a moment before once again sidling into her personal space and then shuffling her papers into a less than neat pile.

"Kakashi! Stop that, I was working on those."

"Nope, not today, tomorrow." He stated flatly and continued shuffling. Her pack was somehow in his hands and he was shoving the papers into them.

"Hey, no, you can't do that, hey – Kakashi!" she made a blind grab for her pack, but even inebriated, he managed to slide from her grasp like an oily fish. "Stop it! These things have an order, you can't just..." His index finger was against her lips.

"Shh." Distractedly the tip of his finger traced the curve of her bottom lip and his eye seemed to glaze over as if focused on something much closer. Slowly, he removed his hand and his eye creased back up into its curved smile.

"You haven't got anywhere to sleep?" he continued after far too long.

Sakura was too busy to trying to find her voice to notice that Kakashi had begun steering her towards the door.

"I-I...umm...no. I am sleeping here. They're finding me a bed in one of the empty wards."

"No, I like to see my team well rested. You are sleeping with me."

Sakura bit her tongue in shock.

Somewhere the Gods of the universe were pointing and laughing while cosmically kicking her in the head.

"I don't think that's appropriate sensei." She was such a hypocrite. She was seething and furious and confused and-

"I'm sorry." He sounded so forlorn and before she could even ask which apology this was, because in her opinion she was owed _many_, he spoke again, "I'm not happy with you sleeping with the enemy." He jerked his head to the window.

"Kakashi...she's in a _coma_. Do you always act like such a child when you're shit-faced, or is it just the saké?"

"Sorry."

"What are you apologising for now?"

"This!" He sang cheerfully and slapped his hand down on her shoulder. With a juddering lurch the world snapped sideways.

The contents of Sakura's stomach rolled unsteadily as the falling sensation came to an abrupt halt, her whole body pitched forward and her hands blindly sought something, _anything_ to stop her fall. Quick fingers snagged the collar of her top, pulling her back against hard, warm firmness.

The swimming green patterns across her vision slowly cleared, the wave of nausea abated.

'_I must be getting better at this teleportation business,'_ she managed to think clearly above the screaming confusion going on in her own mind.

The space was unfamiliar, but the chaotically anal organisation was not. Ahead of her was a bookshelf, full to bursting with books and scrolls of every size and colour. They seemed to be subdivided by genre and alphabetized. She could see the little blue labels with nearly impossible to read spidery handwriting poking out sporadically throughout the vast collection. On the top shelf stood a small contingent of adult fiction (labelled as 'Adult Fiction') and amongst these were several brightly coloured dust jackets that she recognised instantly. His Icha Icha collection.

Sakura found herself standing in Hatake Kakashi's apartment and _really_ not knowing what to do.


End file.
